Sony has announced target launch dates for its new three-tier PlayStation Plus service, giving us our best idea yet of when we'll be able to start using the service.
In an update to the original announcement on the Official PlayStation Blog, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan states that they are "making fantastic progress with our launch efforts" and will be launching the service "a little bit early in selected Asian markets. , followed by Japan.
The post then goes on to list updated target release dates in four regions. These show that the launch will take place over several weeks, with Asian markets excluding Japan expected first in late May and Europe last in late June. The schedule is as follows:
- Asian markets (excluding Japan): target from May 23, 2022
- Japan: June 1, 2022 target
- Americas: Target June 13, 2022
- Europe: Target June 22, 2022
Ryan also reveals that PlayStation will be expanding its cloud streaming access to Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Poland, the Republic of Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. This means that cloud streaming is available in a total of 30 markets and Ryan confirms that these newly added markets will also have access to the Premium tier of PlayStation Plus at launch.
Ryan concludes the update by thanking the PlayStation community for their "continued support," adding that there will be more to share about the service "as we get closer to launch."
Analysis: what's new?
The PlayStation Plus upgrade was announced late last month, following a series of rumors that Sony was looking to release something that would help it compete with Xbox's Game Pass service.
So the new PlayStation Plus is essentially an amalgamation of PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now and comes in three tiers: Essential, Extra and Premium. The Essential tier offers what PlayStation Plus currently offers for the same price: monthly games, online multiplayer, cloud storage, and exclusive discounts.
The Extra tier costs a little more and offers all the benefits of the Essential tier, but adds a catalog of up to 400 first-party and third-party PS4 and PS5 games to download and play.
Finally, Premium is the most expensive tier, costing €17.99 / €16.99 / €13.49 / ¥1,550 per month. With Premium, you get all the benefits of previous tiers plus 340 more games, including PS3 titles via cloud streaming, games to stream and download from PlayStation, PS2, and original generations of PSP, and trial trials before buy for a limited time.
Multiple tiers offering an ever-increasing amount of perks should help Sony appeal to a wide range of gamers, especially those looking to dive into older games that can be difficult to access.
Xbox Game Pass is proving to be a successful venture for Microsoft, and like Game Pass, Sony's service will give subscribers access to a huge library of games to download and stream. One potentially significant point of difference, however, is that unlike Game Pass, PlayStation Plus won't have new versions of its own on the service on day one of launch.
It's something Jim Ryan has previously said Sony isn't looking to do, telling the PlayStation Podcast that "putting these games on a subscription service right after launch would break that virtuous cycle, and we wouldn't be able to invest in the way we currently can." So, we're not. We're going to continue with the approach that we have and that has served us well for many years.
Sony's recently announced target release dates are in line with its previously announced goal of having the service available in most territories "by the end of the first half of 2022", so it looks like things are going according to plan. . .