Sony Does Not Plan to Add First-Party Games Day One to PlayStation Plus - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 July 2025 / 7,166 Views
PlayStation vice president of global services Nick Maguire celebrating the 15th anniversary of PlayStation Plus did an interview with Game File.
Sony Interactive Entertainment does not plan to follow the Xbox Game Pass model of adding first-party titles day-and-date to any tier of PlayStation Plus. However, they plan to add four or five third-party games to the service per year.
"We've sort of stayed true to our strategy across the board, where we're not looking to put games in day and date," said Maguire. "Our strategy of finding four or five independent day-and-date titles—and using that to complement our strategy of bringing games in when they're 12, 18 months old or older—that balance for us is working really well across the platform."
He added, "If there were six or seven great opportunities, then we would go for them as well."
Maguire stated engagement in PlayStation Plus "has never been higher than it is right now" and over the years has "given something like 500 games through monthly games over the years." He estimates around 15 percent of subscribers have "hundreds" of those games in their libraries.
The number of PlayStation Plus subscribers who have upgraded to higher tiers has continued to increase. In fiscal year 2022, 17 percent of subscribers were Premium members and 13 percent were Extra members. That increased to 22 percent for Premium and 16 percent for Extra in fiscal year 2024.
Maguire was asked about a possible price increase elsewhere and he had "no comments, no plans on pricing to talk about directly." He wants PlayStation continue to invest in the service and to "bring more value to users."
PlayStation Plus in April saw a price hike in a number of countries. This includes Australia, Brazil, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. The price also increased in Canada and Türkiye this week.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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This is obvious...
Sony arent in a position to "need" more subs nor are they in a position to be able to burn money chasing more subs
100%
Its not about subs at all. Its about devaluing the product they sell and people actually buy. Its the same reason you wont see Nintendo doing the same thing either.
Their services have value of their own that doesn't take away from the value of their main product.
This is all consumer led btw.
Cool. Let Sony do subs how they want and Xbox do it their way. Both have their own strategy which isnt right or wrong. It all comes down to preference.
You are right they are both right but it has nothing to do with preference. Its about making money.
Gladly
Of course they won't. They can't afford to put games that cost $200 million or more on a subsciption service day 1
If Sony wants to kill their franchise then give it Day One release. Not only will it kill the franchise but releasing it Day One will likely not recover the cost.
If Sony was a company that had billions of dollars to burn in some desperation to gain some footing/subscribers then sure.
But this is bad business.
They saw how it knocked the sales potential out of Horizon 2. As great as it would be to get their games through PS+ all the time, there's absolutely no reason for them to devalue them when their current sales structure works.
Not defending Day One additions...
But Horizon 2 is a terrible example
1). It wasn't day one
2). A massive chunk of H2 sales were via bundles with PS5 which stopped right before it moved into PS Plus
3) Bundles were the ONLY was to buy a PS5 at the time... So of course sales dropped off hard when it was no longer bundled
According to Chris Dring at the time more than 80% of Horizon 2 sales were NOT from the bundle. It may have been the only option to buy at a specific retailers due to the 2022 stock shortages. I remember the UK having this issue for a couple of weeks but it wasn't the only option globally. H2 went into PS Plus in Feb 2023 and had nothing to do with the bundle being removed but rather the increased capacity of PS5 shipments since 2023 was a breakout year for that and H2 was no longer needed for a bundle. Furthermore, they weren't going to keep the bundle going that late into 2023 as Sony was gearing up to manufacture the slim with the removable DD that they announced that fall. Sony has already said publicly that the reason for H2 drop in long term sales was due to the inclusion of PS Plus.
Dring is one of the most unreliable sources, he is a sony cultist.
Dring is a Nintendo supporter, more than anybody else on this site.
Up until January of this year when he left gameindustry.biz this site was using his data for all the European reporting, month after month, year after year. And the admins admit without his data our current European data is less reliable.So take it up with Trunks if you don't think he's reliable.
Dude Sony has been doing this for decades. They monitored the sales and concluded that they lost over 100 million. The idea that you think you know better than them how to monitor the amount of money they lost by putting H2 on PS+ is crazy.
hasn't even been anything to add anyway
lol of course they wouldn't.
Good. They're too successful to need to do that.
Sony need to insure they remain on top with their exclusives, otherwise they will fail hard against gamepass 15 years from now. They need to start cleaning cloud gaming seriously aswel
Current PS+ premium is like £10 a month, do people want it raising to £25?
Very unfortunate typo in the second to last paragraph. The word should be "invest"
Why would they? That would make no financial sense. Imagine how much Expedition 33 would have sold if it wasn't day one on Game Pass.
Sony is running the service the way it should be run.
Sony is showing how its done without having the billions Microsoft has.
Sony is doing it the legit and none corrupt way.
Microsoft is paying millions more to do gamespass.
Same with quick resume and free upgrades this stuff cost money, money Sony doesn't have.
lol
Sony profits billions from PlayStation
You act like they are struggling and can’t afford any pro-consumer moves
Concord would have been a mega hit if launched on Gamepass.
