What people are failing to realize, this is literally giving subscribers 2 free hours of gameplay for "every major" retail release going forward. Games that might otherwise not even be released on the subscription service will still have to have 2 free hours of trial gameplay. it is really genius on Sony's part.
1. Every major game release now technically appears on PS+ day and date or within 3 months including first-party games
2. You as a subscriber of the service get to try every major game for 2 hours and might decide if you want to buy it.
3. It entices people to sub to a higher tier, profit for Sony and profit for the publisher if each trial leads to a purchase and if not, you were never going to buy it anyway, no loss for the publisher.
4. The publisher/dev gets the visibility spike of getting the game in a sub and reaching way more players, but instead of sacrifying games sales/revenue for doing it, probably will increase it
5. Player get more informed purchases, meaning it's more likely that they'll like the games they buy to. So it should increase the % of players who will buy dlc, mtx, sequels or other games from that dev or publisher
6. Player gets happier, publisher/dev gets more money so the platform holder too
I see value in these 2 hr trials.
But it's not the type of feature I'd purposely bump myself a tier up just for that. Then again, I dont play tons of games anymore and the games I like playing are typically tried and true as opposed to random new IPs who knows if they are good or not. I dont need a trial to test out COD or Gears or NHL to determine a make or break purchase. I know I'll buy it or not (if this was before GP).
It seems more like a complementary feature for anyone already gunning for the premium tier.
Sony probably did some math and put trials behind the highest tier because those gamers are willing to pay the most and have all the goodies of the prem plan (tons of games too). No point having trials for enticing game sales across the low tier (or even available for everyone like 360/PS3 era demos for all) because they probably looked at their data and saw bottom tier people arent going to convert anyway. They'll just treat it as short term rentals and never buy anything, so it's just a waste of bandwidth. But the prem tier gamers might convert at a higher rate.
I think a ton of players will see a lot of value on being able to play at least a couple of hours of all new AAA games released in the console. Specially the ones who buy a lot of games because with some games as you mention they won't need to test it, but for other ones will prefer to check them out before buying.
For devs, publishers and the platform holders maybe they think that demos aren't a big benefit when given to low spending players because most likely they won't buy the games anyways and would spend their time there so maybe would even buy less games. But for high spending players, who anyways buy a lot of games will help them choose better which games are they going to buy.
Keeping the trials exclusive for them will also make them feel as premium users, and that combined with retro games and cloud gaming will be a good reason for many people to jump from a smaller tier to this one.
I just saw it mentioned that if it is a trial you might end up having to download a full game and have 2 hours to play it. At least with a demo it would be smaller and most likely wouldn't need a time limit either.
I am really struggling to see the value here especially since I'd have to pay for the highest tier of Sony's service. Couple that with the fact that it could be up to three months after a title comes out before the trial is even active it looks more and more like this shouldn't cost money or at the very least be on the LOWEST tier of PS+ not the top.
According to the article devs can choose between using here a full game time limited trial or a demo. Remember also that in PS5 they have that thing where they can split the game into different downloads so maybe they split the area of let's say the first 5 hours or so to make sure you can play the trial without having to download the full game.
You'll have at least a year to play at least 2 hours all 1st and 3rd party new AAA games released in the console maximum 3 months after launch. You don't see value on this? And well, the tier doesn't only has this, it also has the monthly games, the PS Plus Collection, over 700 games to download or stream from all home PS generations + PSP, discounts, online multiplayer and cloud storage. You have all this during a year for the price of two AAA games.
And this is not counting you can buy it cheaper via cdkey stores. Until now I bought PS+ with over 23% off discount in cd key stores and with the discounts every year I save more money than the one I pay for that year of PS+. Every year there are also some monthly games that I'd have both, whose value is also higher than what I paid for it. So even without the 700 games, cloud and demos I think the pricing is worth it. Which also means I think the base PS+ tier it's a hell of a great deal for its price.
But if it isn't a good deal you can simply not buy it and to don't have the demos not after 3 months, but never (outside this service and platform). So yes, by themselve will have value because it will be the only place where you'll be able to get trials/demos from all new AAA 1st and 3rd party games.
