PlayStation Plus Deluxe (Southeast Asia) Review
What is PlayStation Plus?
If you have never owned a PlayStation 3, 4 or 5, you would not know what PlayStation+ is, so, let me first explain to you what the service was originally and then I’ll go into detail on this review
To start things off, PS+ was originally a service that offered games monthly, discounts and cloud saves (the main features) on the PS3 consoles.
With the release of PS4, they have decided to followed Xbox Live Gold with paid multiplayer, which basically means that you must have PS+ to play online, except for Free to Play games, which Xbox required players to have Gold.
PS4 era still gave games monthly, discounts and cloud save, along with the multiplayer requirement but over at Xbox, the Cloud Save was free now. It was a weird battle between the two but that’s not the point.
Now we come to PlayStation Plus in 2022, the revamp of the service to include a game catalogue like Xbox Game Pass.
You are now essentially caught up with PS+ history!
Features in PS+ 2022
Let’s quickly talk about the features that Essential, Extra and Deluxe offer
Essential gives you the normal PS+ features like Cloud Storage, Online Multiplayer, Discounts and Monthly Games and if you are on PS5, you also get the PlayStation Plus Collection, which are bunch of PS4 games that “defined the generation”
Games included in that collection range from The Last of Us Remastered (Not the PS5 Remake or the PS3 game), Bloodborne, Detroit Become Human, Monster Hunter World and many others. There are a total of 19 games in the collection
Extra gives you all Essential features and Ubisoft+ Classics catalogue and the PS+ Extra Catalogue, which is really good, it’s basically what you want to have on PS5 if you just bought it because, you get a ton of PlayStation 4 and 5 games from the get-go
Ubisoft+ Classics catalogue range from South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Far Cry 5, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Assassin’s Creed Chronicles series and many others. That catalogue comes to a total of 43 games
PS+ Games catalogue range from Judgment, Yakuza series, Middle Earth series, Kingdom Hearts series, Skyrim, Final Fantasy series and many others. That catalogue comes to a combined total of 329 games. Why do I say combined? Well, that’s because the catalogue combines both the Essential and Ubisoft+ Classics catalogues! Plus, it adds the same game several times because of different languages, and it also separates PS4 and PS5 games as well
And lastly, we have the PS+ Deluxe! This is in Southeast Asia or as I like to call it, the Non-PS Now regions.
Deluxe gives you all Essential and Extra features with the addition of Game Trials and the horrible Classics Catalogue. Why is it horrible? I will explain in that later
Game Trials is a very interesting feature, I’m not sure about others but I personally have never used it because, unlike EA Play, where all the trials are 10 hours long, PS+ trials timer differ from game to game. As of this writing, WWE 2K22 has a 2-hour trial (WWE 2K22 enters the Extra Games catalogue on January 3rd, 2023), MLB The Show 22 has a 4-hour trial and Cyberpunk 2077 has a 5-hour trial
Why they chose to do it this way, I’m not sure. Might be something to do with deals and such but I don’t think it is considering Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is a 2-hour trial, while Horizon Forbidden West is a 5-hour trial and those are first party games
The Classics catalogue includes such classics as Ridge Racer 2, Mafia 2 Definitive Edition, Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue, BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition, Limbo and many more. This wonderful classic catalogue has a total of 74 games (it’s combined into the Extra Catalogue if you have Deluxe)
Because of the great features of Essential and Extra like the number of games and discounts, I will give the features 1 point but because it’s required for online play like Xbox Live Gold (A relic of the past), I give it 0.5 points.
Are the games worth it?
If you are just looking at the Extra and Monthly offerings? Yes, especially if you own a PS5, the games in this catalogue includes games like Detroit Become Human, Death Stranding and The Ezio Collection. These are some of the best storytelling and gameplay wise games that I can think of right now. Of course I’m overlooking all the other great offerings they have.
There is a game for everyone who plays on the PS4 and especially if you play on PS5 because there are games like Returnal and Death Stranding: Director’s Cut that’s only playable on the PS5.
I personally love the South Park franchise and having Fractured but Whole is awesome and Infamous: Second Son is another personal favorite as well. I can just scroll through catalogue and pick multiple games that I would love to play right now or get back into playing like Ghost Recon or Bloodborne
But the fun stops when you go into the Classics catalogue, in which, I don’t think you can actually call it that.
But for the Extra Catalogue, I give it 1 point
Are these actual Classics?
Short answers? Some of them are but most of them aren’t.
What do you think of when you hear “PlayStation Classic”? If you say Twisted Metal or the PS1 Spider-Man game, you would be right! But weirdly enough, none of those games are actually on this list.
Spider-Man was published by Activision on PS1, N64 and Dreamcast, alright I can understand that but the original Twisted Metal that released in 1995 for the PlayStation? That game was published by Sony themselves, so what’s the excuse for not having that game?
Instead of those games, we got games like Limbo, Mafia 1 & 2 Remastered, God of War 3 Remastered, Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and The Last of Us: Left Behind (The Standalone edition). How are any of them actually classics considering that most of these games are PS3 and PS4 or remastered for the PS4? Those don’t belong in the classics catalogue; they belong in the Extra catalogue.
I’m not going to be bias and also say that they have added actual classics like Oddworld Abe’s Exodus, Ape Escape, Tekken 2, Syphon Filter and even Patapon and that’s awesome! But it’s not the true Catalogue you expect when it’s called the CLASSICS catalogue. Here is the full library (as of December 2022) for you to see
As you can see, you can hardly call most of these games as classics in the PlayStation Classic kind of way, they might be classic in their own right but not they are not where they should be
No matter the reason there might be for Sony to place these games under the classics catalogue, it’s not good enough, there should be actual PS1, PS2 and PSP games instead of PS3 and remastered games just to fill up the classics catalogue. PS3 and remastered games belong in the extra catalogue and not classic
For that, the classics catalogue gets 0 points from me
No Clouds over Southeast Asia
Another service that doesn’t have cloud in Southeast Asia, I still do not understand how cloud gaming is not possible for PlayStation or Xbox considering that, at least in Singapore, the infrastructure is more than stable to have cloud gaming. I mean, we have GeForce Now in Singapore, be it using Starhub Servers but considering PlayStation Now is or will be using Microsoft Azure and Singapore has Microsoft Azure datacenters. So, what gives?
Until we get an answer from Sony or Microsoft, we won’t know for sure but there’s something good for Sony here and they might get half a point for this, let me explain
When it comes to Xbox Game Pass, you pay the same price no matter what. Even if you have no access to cloud gaming but with PS+, we get two different tiers at the most expensive tier
PS Now regions get the PS+ Premium tier, which cost a total of $120 for a year but non-PS Now regions get the discounted PS+ Deluxe tier, which cost a total of $77 (or S$103.90) for a year.
Because of that, this gets 0.5 points
PS+ with PC?
Unlike Xbox Game Pass, there’s no PS+ for PC …...or is there?
Well, actually, there is! But you have to be living in the PS Now regions, so, if you are like me and you live in one of the PS+ Deluxe aka non-PS Now regions, you are unlucky and you can’t get PS+ for PC
Why is that? Well, it’s because, PS+ uses PS Now streaming for PC gameplay. Yes, PlayStation has released several games on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store but none of those games are actually available on PS+ for PC because PS+ does have Day One games but that’s for later.
Because there is PS+ for PC but it’s not for non-PS Now regions and Deluxe doesn’t have PS Now so this gets 0 points from me
No Additional Services
If you read the Xbox Game Pass Review, you will know that Xbox Game Pass ultimate gets EA Play for free as an add-on, it’s just part of the most expensive service but right now, PS+ Deluxe or Premium doesn’t include EA Play and Ubisoft+ Classic is not Ubisoft+ service
Will EA Play come to PS+ Deluxe or Premium in the future? We don’t know but right now, EA Play is an additional service for S$37.30 and while the EA Play List on PS5 does include games like Battlefield 2042, they do not include games like Alice: Madness Returns because PS3 games are not playable on PS4 or PS5 as PS3 backward compatibility is currently not available on PS4 or PS5.
That being said, paying S$37.30 is just not worth it for EA Play on PS5 compared to Xbox but over at Xbox, if you have the most expensive tier, you get EA Play for free but the most expensive tier on PlayStation doesn’t give EA Play.
Because of this, Add-on services get 0 points from me
Packs of Perks
On Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you get Perks. Perks can be Spotify, Apple TV or even in-game items but on PS+, not only do you get exclusively in-game items, but you also don’t need to subscribe to PS+ Deluxe/Premium to get it. All you need to do is get PS+ Essential
While yes, Ultimate’s perks are nice, you cannot deny that PS+ Packs are perfect for what you use your PS consoles for, playing games.
On top of that, the packs, which are exclusive for PlayStation consoles, are meant for some of the most popular games like Call of Duty, Fortnite and Apex Legends
While yes, Ultimate perks might seem better for you, PS+ Packs might seem better for the people that play on PS consoles. Besides, who doesn’t like free content on their games that they already play?
PS+ Packs gets a point from me
Not a full Day One Service
In a time where all services, Xbox Game Pass, Ubisoft+ and EA Play Pro all include Day One games from their first party studios, none of the first party games like God of War: Ragnarök or Last of Us Part 1 Remake are available on PS+ on Day One.
It’s a weird decision when you could sign up for Xbox Game Pass and get games like Halo and Forza Day One on Xbox and PC, which are now, officially in the $70 era, but Sony has decided that they would charge their customers $70 for the new games and charge their customers $120 for the most expensive tier of PS+
For $60 more a year, Microsoft is able to give their top franchises Day One at no additional cost
What’s even more weird is that Stray, an indie game about a Stray cat going on a journey to try reuniting with it’s friends, was actually Day One on PS+. So, what’s stopping Sony from putting their own games on their own service?
According to Shuhei Yoshida, he believes that a “premium” release first and followed by a release on PS+ about 6 to 12 months later will help manage the lifecycle of the game, while yes, this is kind of true, it’s not entirely true as Stray has proven that Stray completely goes against that theory considering that it was one of the most successful games on PlayStation after it’s release on PS+ Day One.
Gamerant.com recently did some calculations and have come to the conclusion that over 4 million people have played Stray on PlayStation, which is nothing compared to the highest all-time peak of Stray on Steam Charts, which is 51,455 players. Which shows that Day One really does help a lot of gamers discover games that they might not have played initially.
Stuff like that could make or break a game. It could even shut down companies, remember LawBreakers anyone? The failure of that game and Radical Heights were the main reason why Boss Key Productions was shut down in 2018. If LawBreakers was launched Day One on a service like Game Pass or PS+, Boss Key Productions might still be around today
Because of no Day One, this gets 0 points from me
Retailer’s best friend
You might think that it’s weird that I just gave no points to Day One but here I am, about to praise Sony for keeping games away from their PS+ service on Day One but there’s a reason
As I said on my Game Pass Review, I know retailers and distributors and I can tell you without a doubt that no having their games on their service Day One really helps out retailers and distributors. I know this was something they were not expecting to help, considering that they have released a PS5 without a disc drive, this is still true
Sure, I don’t personally like spending $70 or almost S$100 on a standard edition of a game, this is still something that helps out the retailers and, kind of keeping that “midnight release” hype alive but with games slowly putting no data on the disc, like Call of Duty Modern Warfare II did with their physical release. Which now just means that, we have a larger problem, pollution. That’s right, Blu-ray disc does help with the increase of greenhouse emission, especially more if the disc contains nothing but a key to download the game on release day, which means you just doubled the greenhouse emission
So just in case you don’t understand, physical copies of games need to be made with materials that will be harmful for the earth if discarded, shipped across the world and sold but add the fact that those discs do not include the game but a key to download the full 150GB game, like in COD MWII, you are now contributing to about 3.7% to the global greenhouse emission from usage of the internet (and imagine your electricity bills)
But what about the physical copies of games where the game is actually on the disc? Well, it’s awesome right? You can sell the game after you finish it, or you are bored with it. You can even lend your disc to your friend if they want to try it out and that’s a very good thing!
So, in the end, what point do I give for this? Well, I give it one point!
Conclusion
After all that, you would think I do not recommend PS+ but you would be wrong. I totally recommend PS+ but I do not recommend you getting the PS+ Deluxe or PS+ Premium.
PS+ Deluxe/Premium feels like a poor attempt at giving a higher tier like Game Pass Ultimate and to get more gamers to play PS Now and buy a PS Console but without real classics, there’s really no point in subscribing to that tier.
Extra feels like the perfect tier to subscribe to as it gives you the games that you will want to play, and it has the essential services that you need to enjoy your console
In terms of Essential, it’s also a perfect tier as you just need the essential services to play games online and get some games every month
But as a whole, PS+ is severely lacking and even though it’s only been half a year since the service has come out, it feels like they will need another 3 or 4 years to finally understand where the industry is going but considering that even Sony Pictures doesn’t understand that streaming services for TV shows and Movies are the future, it seems like PlayStation might take one entire generation before reforming their service to fit the industry
It’s a 4 out of 10 for PlayStation+ as a whole
