It was inevitable that PlayStation Plus would be broken up into tiers at some point. For years, it was already split between the core PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now, but there was almost no focus put on the latter service until Xbox Game Pass started ramping up. Instead of just rebranding Now as a second tier to Plus, it was instead segmented into Extra and Premium above the Essential tier, which was largely unchanged from what Plus was prior to the change. Premium, being the most expensive option, and even getting the largest price hike with the price increases we saw last year, needed the quality and consistency to match the new asking price.
Up until very recently, I couldn’t say PlayStation Plus Premium was worth the cost. It just wasn’t delivering the kind of consistency it needed to sell it. Now, it looks like it may be living up to its potential as the best option for longtime PlayStation fans.
The promise of Premium
At a glance, Extra looks like the best value of PS Plus’ three tiers if you want more than the absolute basics of online play, cloud saves, and a few free games a month. Extra provides access to a huge library of PS4 and PS5 games from first- and third-parties, frequent new additions, and even the occasional day-one drop. Premium, on the other hand, initially offered nothing more than a drip feed of two or three PS1 and PSP games for years. That’s great if you happened to get a game you were fond of or curious about, but the inconsistent pace and quality of the games were hardly worth the yearly price when you could opt to just purchase any that caught your eye à la carte.
Where Premium was meant to justify its cost was in PS1 and PSP games, but also PS2 and PS3 games. The latter two saw essentially no additions (literally none in the case of PS3 games) since converting from PS Now. The aforementioned price increase last year certainly didn’t help people’s perception of Premium, but Sony itself holds the blame.
Instead of giving any update on the great changes that were coming to Premium, it stayed silent and let players assume they would be paying more for the same level of service. Improvements were coming, as we are now starting to see. PS1 games have started to get consistent Trophy support as an extra incentive to revisit some older titles, and even games that previously launched without Trophies are getting them retroactively.
PS2 games, which for many was the major sore spot in Premium’s offerings, are once again starting to show up. These new additions come with Trophies, just like the initial batch, but run on better emulators built for the PS5 that include tons of quality-of-life improvements like rewind, remapping controls, and the ability to save and load anywhere.
An unexpected addition — that honestly should have happened a long time ago — is that Premium now includes VR games. Fans of the PlayStation VR2 had long hoped that Sony would start putting VR titles on its service as a way to lower the barrier to entry on the headset by giving people access to a small library of games at no extra charge. I doubt it could’ve changed PSVR 2’s ultimate fate, but I know I would have at least used the headset, and thus talked about it more, had I been given a reason to strap it on every month.
Sony is treating Premium exactly the same way it handled PlayStation Now, which is to say that it hasn’t done a great job at advertising its strengths. PS Now was PlayStation’s underrated, original streaming and games catalog service prior to it introducing Extra and Premium. It was hardly a household name, even among hardcore gamers. PS Plus Premium is falling into the same trap. We get the monthly blog posts with the new games, but that’s it. Moves like adding Trophy support and consistently adding PS2 and VR games aren’t flashy announcements, but it does speak to a dedicated part of its fanbase that might otherwise never stumble across this news. If Sony doesn’t advocate for its own service after driving so many people away, who will?
PlayStation Now had a rocky start, but secretly got to a point where it could stand toe-to-toe with Game Pass at the time. The only issue was that Sony never publicized the improvements and great games on the service. Premium appears to be on the same path. That’s a shame because if Sony keeps up the pace of dishing out a few PS1, PSP, PS2, and VR games each month, we will finally have a service that is worthy of the name Premium.
