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Sony: PlayStation Plus Reaches 7.9 Million Subscribers

Principate

Saint Titanfall
It kinda is. Looking at it from "mandatory in order to play games online" standpoint: There are 80 million 360's and 17 million Gold subs. There are 10-13 million PS4's and 7.9 million PS+ subs. That's quite a drastic attach rate difference in premium subs. Not sure how many are paying for PS+ who are just PS3 or Vita owners, since that sub is not needed for online.

You needed to buy an adapter to even play the X360 online wirelessly for a long time. Combined with the fact online games are far more mainstream and the fact that early adopters are more likely to be core gamers it's not that strange.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Kinda explains why there is less AAA content on plus these days.

Giving your game away free to potentially 7.9 million people? Even I have to balk at that a bit.

Sometimes giving a game away (especially true for MP games) gives a huge boost to the online community and does wonders for brand exposure. Also in all likelihood any AAA games that are given away by either Sony or MS are not still selling millions of copies. Furthermore, as Yoshida has pointed out previously, not all of the 7.9 million PS+ subscribes will download the game.
 

BigDug13

Member
You needed to buy an adapter to even play the X360 online wirelessly for a long time. Combined with the fact online games are far more mainstream and the fact that early adopters are more likely to be core gamers it's not that strange.

Well then MS should be even more worried then if they're losing early sales lead so handily if most of those buyers are the premium subcribers.
 
Sometimes giving a game away (especially true for MP games) gives a huge boost to the games online community and does wonders for brand exposure. Also in all likelihood any AAA games that are given away by either Sony or MS are not still selling millions of copies. Furthermore, as Yoshida has pointed out previously, not all of the 7.9 million PS+ subscribes will download the game.

Also Sony gives compensation for games that are put on PS+, so it's not like they're just giving them away.
 

Griss

Member
PS+ Subscribers Triple In Number Since PS4 Launch (January 2014)

If the PS+ numbers had tripled by then, what have then done at this stage? I'd love to know what the pre-PS4 subscriber count was. The sad conclusion is that the vast majority of PS+ subs are now paying for multiplayer rather than the games and discounts. That's never what PS+ was supposed to be. It's really shitty how this turned out, even if we're still getting some great games.

I still remember that E3 moment when they used the euphoria of no-DRM to slip this one by us.
 
Oh really, when did they announce Gold sub numbers?

It wasn't announced, it was (presumably not supposed to) blurted out in an interview with the CEO of Wargaming.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/23/interview-victor-kislyi-on-wargaming-in-a-single-breath/

Of course the biggest constraint would be the limited amount of Gold subscribers. Of course we have to respect that rule of Microsoft; there’s only something around 17 million Gold subscribers to that, so that’s a limitation but anyway this experiment was good, results were good, and we’re thinking what to do next.
 

Klart

Member
With all that money, Sony should provide a more reliable service.

PSN is down way too often lately.
 
That's never what PS+ was supposed to be. It's really shitty how this turned out, even if we're still getting some great games..

It was obvious in the PS3 era when Sony talked about customer satisfaction in regards to PS+ that despite the value of IGC, the actual consumer buy-in of PS+ was only a small fraction of the install base. Despite how good IGC was, they'd rather not pay at all.

I've echoed this before, but it's a sad world we live in when something good only grew by doing something bad to it. (paywalling MP)

Giving great titles in IGC = doesfuckingnothing
Paywall MP = triple subscriber count
 

Sean

Banned
That seems rather low for a service that launched in June 2010 and covers three platforms. Sony recently said PS+ subscriptions have doubled since Destiny so it was only at ~3.95m subs prior to this September (and that 3.95m figure includes ten months of it being mandatory for MP on PS4 which undoubtedly makes up a large percentage).

Kinda shows the Instant Game Collection was not a huge draw for most people.
 

BigDug13

Member
It was obvious in the PS3 era when Sony talked about customer satisfaction in regards to PS+ that despite the value of IGC, the actual consumer buy-in of PS+ was only a small fraction of the install base. Despite how good IGC was, they'd rather not pay at all.

I've echoed this before, but it's a sad world we live in when something good only grew by doing something bad to it. (paywalling MP)

Giving great titles in IGC = doesfuckingnothing
Paywall MP = triple subscriber count

Microsoft made it palatable and the revenue Live Gold generated made Sony drool. It sucks, but it's expected due to consumers being ok with it.
 

Cyriades

Member
During the previous conference calls in July and May, Sony announced investments in new servers in order to cope with the increased traffic.

Interesting-Ideas-Fruit-and-Vegetable-Art-25.jpg
 

Guevara

Member
Seems low to me too.

I mean I have Plus, but I haven't yet bought a PS4. There;s still a lot of room for growth, which is good.
 
Kinda shows the Instant Game Collection was not a huge draw for most people.

It shows when Sony talked about customer satisfaction in regards to PS+ instead of growth/subscriber count/etc.

Sony has practically never talked about PS+'s growth as a revenue model until the PS4 launched, which highly implied that the actual buy-in of PS+ back when MP was free didn't matter to the larger audience.
 

truth411

Member
Now they should invest some of that money into improving the service, PSN has been declining in quality since the PS4 came out, and the IGC is laughable now
Umm... Share Play..... And the IGC is what you would expect with a limited game library for the PS4, it has not even been a year yet. If you have a vita and a PS3 it's been pretty good for a while now. I just don't get the "PS+ only applies to the PS4 IGC and everything else don't count" mentality.
 
That seems rather low for a service that launched in June 2010 and covers three platforms. Sony recently said PS+ subscriptions have doubled since Destiny so it was only at ~3.95m subs prior to this September (and that 3.95m figure includes ten months of it being mandatory for MP on PS4 which undoubtedly makes up a large percentage).

Kinda shows the Instant Game Collection was not a huge draw for most people.


I'm pretty sure they meant doubled new subscriptions from the month before. Unless you really believe 4 million bought it in the one month when Destiny sold about 600,000 copies.
 
Probably already suggested, but they need to invest some of this money into improving PSN's infrastructure. Or they're going to watch those numbers plummet.
 

truth411

Member
Kinda explains why there is less AAA content on plus these days.

Giving your game away free to potentially 7.9 million people? Even I have to balk at that a bit.

False, when IGC first came out the PS3 was already out for a few years and thus a decent game library. It was easy to approach publishers with some money for games that's not selling that much anymore and make it part of the IGC. The PS4 hasn't been out for a year yet, I think some folks here on gaf don't know how IGC works. But that's why we have been getting awesome PS3 and Vita titles, AAA PS4 games will start showing up at the end of next year imo.
 

Snakeyes

Member
I'm honestly surprised at how low the amount of subscribers is across both services, especially for XBL. Wouldn't this imply that several million consumers bought CoD and never played online?
 

EGM1966

Member
PS+ Subscribers Triple In Number Since PS4 Launch (January 2014)

If the PS+ numbers had tripled by then, what have then done at this stage? I'd love to know what the pre-PS4 subscriber count was. The sad conclusion is that the vast majority of PS+ subs are now paying for multiplayer rather than the games and discounts. That's never what PS+ was supposed to be. It's really shitty how this turned out, even if we're still getting some great games.

I still remember that E3 moment when they used the euphoria of no-DRM to slip this one by us.

Plus was clearly a minority on PS3 - at the end of the day it was paying to some premium extra with free online and as such as unlikely to drive a huge membership.

By contrast with Plus being how to play online with PS4 it's now essentially mandatory for a much larger segment of the install base (with the extras more of a, well, extra).

When US/UK market embraced paying for Live and basically sent the signal they'd rather pay for online than have free online if they perceived they were getting a better service it was inevitable Sony would follow suit.

At least they've left Vita and PS3 "as is" rather than make them require Plus for online too.

With current trends Plus numbers are sure going to swell steadily. Sony are really going to have to make sure PSN is as bulletproof as possible and avoid anything else like Driveclub (which has nothing to do with PSN but to casual observer it will seem an indication of problems with PSN coping with volume).
 

autoduelist

Member
Kinda explains why there is less AAA content on plus these days.

Giving your game away free to potentially 7.9 million people? Even I have to balk at that a bit.

Why? Assuming they get paid per download, which seems to be the policy, that's just more money for the dev/pub. And for those games put on ps+ to promote sequels, it's that much broader of a reach.

I mean, if I'm at the point in my sales curve that going to ps+ makes sense for my game, then I'd want as many people as possible to download it for that $x.xx per person. 100 million ps+ subscribers? Sure!
 

Portugeezer

Member
PS+ Subscribers Triple In Number Since PS4 Launch (January 2014)

If the PS+ numbers had tripled by then, what have then done at this stage? I'd love to know what the pre-PS4 subscriber count was. The sad conclusion is that the vast majority of PS+ subs are now paying for multiplayer rather than the games and discounts. That's never what PS+ was supposed to be. It's really shitty how this turned out, even if we're still getting some great games.

I still remember that E3 moment when they used the euphoria of no-DRM to slip this one by us.

It kind of felt like: "you're gonna ditch Xbox, so you can pay for ours now"
 
The sad conclusion is that the vast majority of PS+ subs are now paying for multiplayer rather than the games and discounts. That's never what PS+ was supposed to be. It's really shitty how this turned out, even if we're still getting some great games.

I still remember that E3 moment when they used the euphoria of no-DRM to slip this one by us.

I think PS+ was always supposed to be about getting customers to pay for multiplayer. The only way Sony could make it go down easy, after touting free play for so long, was to make it a games program.

At some point Sony had to realize that giving online away for free was leaving a ton of money on the table. The problem is, XBL users have been enthusiastic about subscribing because the service worked so well. I don't think copying Sony's games as a reward for subscribing plan has helped XBL in any way.
 
That's around $395,000,000. That's how much they paid for Gaikai.

Would have been insane not to charge for MP this generation.

And Sony really revealed it in a way that was incredibly minimally critiqued. Part of that is because the IGC was really solid beforehand, and of course, the shadow of always online and used games was a bigger deal. I always imagined charging for online would have received a huge backlash, but Sony really had no problem.
 

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
That's not really as high a number as I would have expected at this point, esp. across three platforms and with all the announcements in the past year about doubling and tripling subs.

But given that PS4 is the only version of the sub that paywalls online MP access, I guess it makes some sense. The platform breakdown would probably further help elucidate why they've been slow to bolster the network infrastructure.
 
That's not really as high a number as I would have expected at this point, esp. across three platforms and with all the announcements in the past year about doubling and tripling subs.

But given that PS4 is the only version of the sub that paywalls online MP access, I guess it makes some sense. The platform breakdown would probably further help elucidate why they've been slow to bolster the network infrastructure.

I'd guess 90% of Plus subscribers are PS4 owners.
 
So, I'm looking for the source of this information. Even though I listened this entire 49 minutes webcast I wasn't able to catch the moment where Sony reveal the PS+ numbers. Anyone got the moment ? Maybe the author of the story if he's checking here.

I know Games Industry reported the story, but I'm not sure if they listened to the earning calls themselves of if they took the story on the banned site.
 
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