News: 0178196046

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Sony Won't Budge on PlayStation Plus Day-One Releases For First-Party Games (gamefile.news)

(Thursday June 26, 2025 @05:40PM (msmash) from the no-mercy dept.)


PlayStation will [1]continue withholding its first-party games from PlayStation Plus on launch day, despite Xbox offering day-one releases through Game Pass. Nick Maguire, PlayStation's vice president of global services, told Game File the company remains committed to its current approach of adding first-party titles to the subscription service 12 to 18 months after release. "We've sort of stayed true to our strategy across the board, where we're not looking to put games in day and date," Maguire said.

PlayStation instead selects four to five independent games annually for day-one PlayStation Plus releases, a strategy Maguire described as "working really well across the platform."



[1] https://www.gamefile.news/p/playstation-plus-15th-anniversary-interview-ghost-of-tsushima


Re: (Score:2)

by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 )

Microsoft as a strategy seems to not do exclusives anymore: [1]Project Latitude: More Details About the Rumored Plans To Bring Xbox Games To Rival Platforms Out [ign.com]

[2]I think the Microsoft strategy today is "We own and bought a shitload of game studios so we can sell those games everywhere". [gamerant.com]

[1] https://in.ign.com/xbox/207852/news/project-latitude-more-details-about-the-rumored-plans-to-bring-xbox-games-to-rival-platforms-out

[2] https://gamerant.com/xbox-games-nintendo-switch-2-report/

Why lose the sales? (Score:2)

by dgatwood ( 11270 )

If there are still enough suckers willing to pay for a Playstation Plus subscription even without the newest games, and if you can then sell some of those games to some of the people who have the subscriptions, that's free money. The only thing that would likely make a real impact on that would be if they saw their subscriptions start to decline and single-title sales increase after some major title came out.

So if you want to make that policy change, pick an upcoming title and convince about a hundred tho

Re: (Score:2)

by EvilSS ( 557649 )

Good idea, except you also need PS+ to play online games (except F2P games). So no one is going to drop it over day-one first party access if they play online games like COD. Unlike XBox Sony doesn't have a tiered system (Gamepass Core/Ultimate) so PS+ is the only option.

Re: (Score:1)

by Bradac_55 ( 729235 )

They have a PS5, I doubt they have even 3 friends.

They're not in the same position as Microsoft (Score:2)

by HalAtWork ( 926717 )

Microsoft are more desperate here having lost a lot of ground in consoles and trying to pivot to where they are stronger on the Windows desktop, but still so far behind Steam and Epic and others on there. They are trying to integrate Steam and others into their Windows gaming app to get any attention at all from gamers. You might think that Game Pass could be strong on PC but it's not. There are always complaints about how gamers are having problems getting games to run properly through Game Pass, having to

Re: (Score:2)

by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

The golden era for Xbox was the 360 and they've never really recaptured it. There was a brief moment, in that era, in which they had the absolutely superior online capabilities with Xbox Live (that they had really gotten off the ground during the earlier Xbox era). PS2 and early PS3 just did not offer what Xbox did in terms of online capabilities; but once that advantage was gone Xbox lost a lot of that ground and they don't seem to be trending towards recapturing it.

On the PC side of things, I don't see w

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