Game Pass Vs. The New PS Plus, The Comparison We Had To Make

Picture: Sony/Microsoft/Kotaku

Two months ago, Sony reinvented PS Plus, its longstanding membership program for PlayStation owners. Now, that’s a lot like Microsoft’s Game Pass: for roughly the same amount of money, both offer access to a Netflix-style library of on-demand games. Obviously, we had to stack the two services against each other.

Price

Game Pass is available as a subscription for console, PC, or both. The two separate tiers cost $10 per month. Xbox Live Ultimate, which joins the two and provides access to the EA Play Library (a similar on-demand games service) and Xbox Live Gold, costs $15 per month. There’s no way to pay months or a year upfront with tiered markdown (at least officially).

PS Plus is also available for a subscription, but it gets very complicated very quickly. There are two new levels. The extra costs $15 per month, or $100 for the year, and offers free monthly games, online games, and an on-demand games catalog, including some of Ubisoft’s library. Premium costs $18 per month, or $120 per year, and adds access to classic games, game trials, and cloud streaming for most games in the library. That’s a huge difference in price, and while PS Plus Premium is more expensive month-to-month, it’s actually almost 50% cheaper if you sign up for the whole year.

Winner: PS Plus

Diffusion

Game Pass allows cloud streaming, provided you pay for the more expensive Ultimate tier. The streaming feature is technically still “in beta”, but it’s for all intents and purposes operational. Microsoft recommended Internet speeds of at least 10 Mbps for mobile devices and 20 Mbps for consoles and PCs. According to Kotaku’s tests, it’s… good? Despite recent huge advances in cloud gaming, streaming still can’t compete with downloaded games. Latency, even minimal, is unbelievable. As such, cloud gaming is best used for puzzles, relaxing RPGs, light platforming, and other games that don’t require split-second reflexes.

Microsoft says “over 100” games are currently streamable via cloud gaming on Xbox Game Pass, but more games are being added every few weeks. Right now, the Game Pass library currently lists 381 streamable games.

Stray.Screenshot: Annapurna / Kotaku

To unlock streaming on PS Plus, you need to purchase the $18 per month tier. And even then, the streaming quality is nothing out of the ordinary. At best, it’s as good as Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sometimes it’s worse. Around 320 games in the Premium library can be streamed on console or PC, and a good chunk of them are PS3 games and classics rather than the full PlayStation 4 library. For example, Marvel’s Avengers and Stray are available on console but not in the streaming library.

Specifically, you cannot stream PS Plus games to your phone. For now, the service relies on Remote Play, which means you need a console to play on mobile and you need to be on the same WiFi network.

Winner: Game Pass

game library

Of course, a game-on-demand service is only as good as the one thing it’s supposed to provide: games.

At present, the Xbox Game Pass library has about 475 games, but that tally includes both tiers’ library, including the 92 games currently part of EA Play. The main appeal, of course, is that Microsoft is putting its entire first-party portfolio on the platform. This also includes major tentpoles, like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5, as well as upcoming blockbusters like Starfield and Redfall, which become available on release day. Third-party games tend to last a year at most, though some, like Rockstar’s open-world Hold ‘Em simulator Red Dead Redemption 2, become unavailable after a few months. It’s unpredictable.

Halo Infinite. Screenshot: 343 Industries

The library also spins regularly in third-party games and often serves as a launchpad for indie gems. This year alone, the Zelda-like tunic, snowboard sim Shredders, and puzzler-cum-dungeon-crawler Loot River have all launched on Game Pass. (Here is Kotaku’s list of the best under-the-radar games currently available.) The developers acknowledged to Kotaku that debuting on Game Pass reduces initial sales, but is ultimately worth it for the trade-off in advertising.

PS Plus Extra currently includes around 430 PS4 and PS5 games, while Premium adds another 395 from PS1, PS2, PS3 (streaming only) and PSP. While the classics are a nice bonus, by far the biggest draw is PlayStation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Bloodborne. Unlike Microsoft, Sony has pledged not to put its latest releases on the service day and date, and if Returnal arrives a year after release is any indication, it seems like a good bet that gamers will have to wait at least a year. year for 18 months before new things appear.

There are plenty of serious competitors in the third-party department, however. Games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, Prey, Control, Doom and Tetris Effect are all present, as are indies like Celeste, Outer Wilds, Dead Cells and Virginia. The library has a lot of diversity and was bolstered most recently by the same-day addition of Stray, who is already a 2022 GOTY contender. The Ubisoft component, led by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is also a strong compliment. At the same time, Sony has yet to demonstrate that it is, or will be, as aggressive as Microsoft in courting a steady stream of third-party day-and-date additions. There is also no PC exclusive part of the library.

Winner: PS Plus

Ari: Going into this exercise, I totally imagined it would paint a clear picture of the superiority of Game Pass, but both of these services look fundamentally identical to me – right down to the user interface – with the new version of PS Plus from Sony slightly better in the few aspects that matter. The prices are mostly the same, but the option to pay for a year of PS Plus at a “discount” surpasses Game Pass in this regard. Of course, the big appeal of Game Pass is that it puts Microsoft’s first-party games on the service at launch, but… Microsoft has virtually no first-party games this year! Right now, this perk appears to be little more than a line of marketing.

Ethan: I also thought Game Pass would be the big winner, but now I’m conflicted as well. Not everyone can afford to pay a full year upfront, but that really changes the math in this game. There are other key differences as well, and while I don’t think they make one a clear winner over the other, I think it’s easier to decide which one you want to pay for. Want immediate access to a full catalog of some of the biggest and best games from the last generation? PS Plus wins. Want to stay on top of some of the best new games coming out every month and play them anytime on your phone? Then it’s Game Pass all the way.