Recently, Sony launched its new subscription for PlayStation consoles. And although in Russia subscription is not yet officially
Of course, PS Plus is not a competitor to the Xbox Gamepass. Not in the sense that Sony was going to create a competitor, but in the fact that the Xbox with a subscription is much better in any case and more user-friendly. And that's why.
1. Too Many Subscription Options - Get Confused
Previously, Sony had only one subscription - PS Plus,and there was also a cloud service PS Now. Everything is simple and clear. Now PS Plus has 4 options: Essential, Extra, Deluxe and Premium. At the same time, Essential is the good old “regular” PS Plus, and the availability of Deluxe and Premium depends on the region. So, you will have to spend a lot of time studying the tables.
Monthly Free PS4/PS5 GamesExclusivediscounts, cloud saves, online multiplayerApproximately 400 free PS4/PS5 gamesPS3 game streamingTime-limited new game demosPS1, PS2, PSPPS Plus EssentialYesYes————PS Plus ExtraYesYesYes———PS Plus DeluxeYesYesYesYesYes—PS Plus PremiumYesYesYesYesYesYes—PS Plus PremiumYesYesYesYesYes
Perhaps the point of this approach was tothe user eventually got tired of studying the tables and would simply buy the most expensive subscription - Premium. But, as it turns out, it is not available in all countries! And even now I’m not talking about Russia. In fact, PS Plus Premium is only available where cloud game streaming works (this is when you don’t put the game on the console, but run it in the cloud, with all the image compression artifacts). And where “officially” there is no streaming - instead of Premium there is a Deluxe subscription.
Interestingly, streaming formally works in Russia, but the account must not be Russian. Although, no VPN is still required. Some artificial restrictions.
Xbox subscriptions now have three:Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Moreover, the latter includes the first and second at once. Those. Xbox Live Gold + Xbox Game Pass = Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Also not quite “twice two”, but it is very easy to understand and remember.
Gold is 4 free games per month andthe ability to play online paid games, and Game Pass is a catalog of temporarily available games from third-party publishers and permanently available games from Microsoft's own studios, released there on the first day.
Xbox users have long been interested only in the Ultimate subscription, which is available everywhere.
2. New AAA games from internal studios won't be released there on the first day anyway.
This has already been stated by Jim Ryan, the head of Sony.Yes, there are already free (well, as free - by subscription) games, but hits like Uncharted, God Of War, etc. will still go out as usual, for the money. And they will get into the subscription, if you're lucky, a couple of years after the release.
In principle, the motivation is clear - subscription incomethe case is uncontrollable and as blurry as possible. No matter how Microsoft boasts that Game Pass brings a lot of money to developers, but usually in such news we are still talking about small indie studios, and the average game from Microsoft, with rare exceptions, still looks clearly “cheaper” than games from PlayStation (despite the fact that the Xbox Series X is a more powerful console than the PlayStation 5).
New games in Xbox Game Pass
And yet, this is also an argument:why then do you need an expensive subscription if the “main” games will still be sold? How many times has it already happened: when a major game from internal studios gets distributed by subscription (after a couple of years) - everyone who wanted to play has already bought it. Only new players who have recently bought a PlayStation remained. Is it just for them?
3. Navigation in the store is as inconvenient and unintuitive as possible
Here, they say, it can still depend on the region of the subscription, for example, my region is the UK. Apparently, the US is a little better with navigation, but the main problems have not been resolved.
For example, games are not grouped by console in any way. Currently, PS Plus Premium includes games from PS1, PS2, PSP, PS3, PS4 and PS5 consoles - that is, from all generations.
Section "Retro". Everything is in a heap…
What if I'm a retro lover and I want to watchall PS2 games? How should I do it? No way. There is a “retro” section in which, for example, Celeste (2018) and Undertale (2015) are present, there was also Mafia: Definitive Edition (2020), but then they removed it. And Jumping Flash! with PS1 (1995) I eventually found it in the New Games section.
Section "Classic games". Well yes…
In principle, you can display sections with PS1, PS2 and PSP games, but you can’t see them separately either - they are in one heap.
Okay - maybe we'll just look at the list of allgames, and there we will select games from different consoles? We have problems here too. For example, games from the PlayStation 3 are marked with the PS3 icon on the icon - everything is logical. But PS1, PS2, PSP games are marked with… PS4 or PS4/PS5. That is, yes, games, for example, from PS1 can also be downloaded on PlayStation 5 in the version - for PS4 or PS5!
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This is what a PS1… game looks like in the store.
As a result, you just need to know in advance what timeIt's the game you want to play, and it doesn't matter on which console. The option “what was released on PS2, otherwise I didn’t have this console?” just not provided.
What about the Xbox? And there, using the filter, you can separate games for the Xbox Series, Xbox One and Xbox 360 + Xbox Original. You can't separate the last two, but it's still better than Sony's.
Subscription game list filter on Xbox
Someone will say, they say, well, what's the difference ifCan you still find a specific game with a search? Okay, those who had PS1 and PS2 as kids are lucky. But what if a person just wants to play something that he missed at one time?
4. There are very few old games and their selection raises questions
Since for the games of the present and the pastgenerations in the subscription, in fact, little has changed, let's talk about retro. Personally, like many, I was waiting for this subscription precisely for the opportunity to “legally” play retro games from old PlayStations on my PlayStation 5. But the choice of old games for the collection is simply depressing.
From the Motorstorm series among PS3 games on PS PlusPremium is available only to Motorstorm Apocalypse and the controversial Motorstorm RC. The best part - Pacific Rift - is not there for some reason. It's good that they brought Resistance 3, but Killzone 2.3 is missing.
For PS1 games, only Jumping Flash!, Resident Evil: Director's Cut and Tekken 2 are the only hits. Again - why the second Tekken, and not the third? Where is the second Resident Evil? Where is Twisted Metal? Ridge Racer?
Some might argue that Resident Evil 2 is notneeded, because there is a remake. But the first RE also has a remake, and for a long time! You can play it on PS5 too. And this did not stop adding the original game to the subscription (ok, not quite original, but the Director's Cut).
There is only one game from the PSP collection:Super Stardust Portable. Those. a game that has had an enhanced version on PS4 for a hundred years that can also be played on PS5. Wouldn't it have been better to include God Of War: Chains Of Olympus and Ghost Of Sparta with the PSP? The PSP version of Siphon Filter? Or is this where GTA Vice City Stories is one of the best parts of GTA that came out on PS2 and PSP?
The only PSP game available. It's simple: WHY?
For the Jak and Daxter series on PS2 - thanks, butwhy not add different Crash Bandicoot games? Old Monster Hunter? Again - Ridge Racer, or still respected by many Gran Turismo 4? Negotiate with Square Enix for editions of Dragon Quest and numerous Final Fantasy?
Possibly the best retro game in the collection. And it works great, at 60 (well, or 50) FPS.
Where, after all, are the early Persona games?
5. Older games haven't received any improvements (and sometimes work worse than they used to)
Okay, there are still some improvements.For example, PS1 games can run at higher resolutions, although this only applies to 3D rendering. All 2D assets are still represented by large pixels, but these are small things.
It's much worse that PS4/PS5 doesn't fix it in any waythe geometry of the polygons, which, due to the peculiarities of PS1 rendering, are constantly “jumping”, twitching and distorting. Moreover, it is even more noticeable with a higher resolution! And most importantly, all these fixes have long been available on emulators, including Duck Station, which can be installed without any problems (and without a developer account) on the same Xbox Series.
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Generally speaking, this ultra-high resolution in PS1 games rather interferes…
At the same time, games with PS1 in the European region are stillSince then, PAL versions have been presented, which worked at 25/50 fps maximum. Those. a game that ran at 30 fps in America and Japan was only running at 25 fps in Europe (and even then at best). And such images were stuffed into a subscription!
No, I understand that the European versions have morelanguages (there is German, Italian, French), but what's the point now? Couldn't you have given a choice? Why does Nintendo use the best images by default in all its retro collections, although European ones are also available there?
Ninja Gaiden Black from Xbox Original to Xbox Series X. No need for a remaster here.
What about the Xbox?And there, by default, all Xbox Original games come in increased resolution, close to 4K. And quite a few games on the Xbox 360 also received increased resolution to 4K, and some of them also received FPS Boost, that is, an increase in frame rate from 30 FPS to 60 FPS. Also FPS Boost is in many big hits from Xbox One (not necessarily exclusive). Mega hits like Ninja Gaiden 2, Mirror's Edge, Oblivion, Fallout 3 run at 4K/60 FPS.
But the PlayStation simply does not have anything like that.
6. PS3 games only work in streaming mode (and streaming is worse than Switch)
If you want to play the game with PS1, PS2, PSPor PS4 on your PS5, then you just download this game to your console and run it. But PS3 games are available only as streaming (some PS4 games can also be streamed, but why? especially since there are versions with a regular PS4, not PS4 Pro).
On the one hand, this is understandable:The Cell processor that was at the heart of the PS3 was too complex and unusual (roughly speaking), and is still emulated with a bang and only partially. Even on top PCs on the PS3 emulator, not everything works, and what works often starts very crookedly and with brakes. The developers of the emulator literally tune it for literally every game, and this process continues to this day.
Motorstorm from PS3 to PS5. It looks better in dynamics than in the screenshot, but still…
But anyway:streaming is an additional downgrade of an already low quality. And at Sony, streaming is also done as horribly as possible. Coincidentally, the other day for my YouTube channel, I was testing cloud gaming on the Nintendo Switch. This semi-portable console will obviously not pull Hitman 3, Control, Guardians of the Galaxy "as usual", but in the cloud version it is quite for itself. Moreover, Control at 60 fps worked on it through the cloud just perfectly, with only a small “soap”, while consuming only 5 Mbps of traffic.
Sony's streaming is... weird.There are a lot of artifacts, the picture is heavily compressed, the connection quality is constantly jumping, the input lag is simply huge. I played Motorstorm: Apocalypse with relatively no problems, but Resistance 3 was very uncomfortable to play. I was able to launch RDR before the gameplay only during the day (in the evening the game just crashed on the splash screen), and Lost Planet 2 worked so badly that I could not stand the tutorial. There is also such a thing that if your console downloads at least something, then you can forget about streaming - games become simply unplayable.
On the one hand - well, it’s logical, the channel is clogged, withanother - why can't the console itself manage resources? Why does Switch stop downloading if it interferes with a running game? Why does Xbox slow down the download speed when the game is running? Isn't launching a game more important than downloading it to a gaming console?
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This is how you can now play the first Red Dead Redemption on Xbox Series X (see full screenshot)
And in general - I have a connection of 200 Mbps.I can download several large files, my kids can watch cartoons on YouTube, and I can stream in high quality, all at the same time. What speed do you need to stream on the PlayStation?
Well, and most importantly, games on PS3 still don’t workimproved (only worsened due to streaming problems). The same RDR, which is suddenly available on PS Plus Premium, ultimately runs on PS5 at a resolution of 1152×640 pixels with additional soap due to compression, and on Xbox Series X and One X in 4K. Feel the difference.
7. Buying a subscription in Russia is more difficult than from Microsoft
Well, the most important thing.Yes, although Microsoft has also suspended sales in Russia and generally threatens to leave our market, it is still possible to change the region of the account there. And the games, as well as the subscription, are freely sold on completely legal marketplaces. With a PlayStation subscription, everything is more complicated: firstly, 100% you need a new account and set to another country. Secondly, you can’t just buy a subscription on marketplaces, and top-up cards are sold at a wild markup. So, in any case, you need an intermediary.
There are more and more such intermediaries and they generally decideproblem. But still, it's a different account. Yes, you can play many games with your main account, but without streaming. Those. PS1, PS2, PSP, PS4 games yes, PS3 games no.
Not that it's a big problem.However, avid PlayStation fans are accustomed to showing off their “achievements” - i.e. achievements in your profile. It's nice to compare yourself to your friends on the PSN network service and see that you have more achievements or that they (achievements) are “more expensive”. But now it will be much more difficult to amuse pride.