I am truly regretting buying Plus for the second year. There have been virtually no games I'm interested in this year at all, beyond a couple that I already owned. They seem highly reluctant to put anything in there that's third person, single player/offline and not a horror game.
@Kidfried that's fair enough, I'm not much of a multiplayer gamer at all really and historically CoD had a bit of a weird culture around it around the time of the original Modern Warfare games so I passed on the whole thing.
I have a mate who lives in another country though so occasionally we play online together just for a catch up so I've played a bit of Warzone with him. He's a lot better at it than I am though because I don't play it unless he texts me for an online meet up which is probably less than twice a year 😅
I quite liked the Wii and Wii U versions though because of Wii remote implementation. I doubt the control scheme would be any good for online but the campaigns were quite enjoyable when I played them that way!
I’m still not clear with how PS Plus works on the business end. And what I mean is that I’m not sure if the games are mostly sought by Sony to include into the service or if it’s the other way around and developers and publishers come to Sony and lobby to get their games onto the service.
Perhaps it’s a little bit of both, but I suspect it’s mostly Sony seeking out games by going out and pitching to other publishers for the right to put those games in there. Money changes hands, certainly, but I assume both parties are looking for a mutual benefit.
In the case of COD, I’m just not sure what the ‘win’ is for either Sony or Activision to have the fifth COD game included on PS Plus in the last.. what, two years? Is it really drawing people to PS Plus? Or is it really helping Activision to sell more COD? Maybe.
I’m not complaining, as I do actually think it’s nice to have these in my library at no additional cost, just in case I ever make good on my resolve to try the series one day. But I’m just not sure it’s a series that needs a boost from Plus like say, Rocket League or Fall Guys have famously benefitted from. Or even series like Just Cause, Mafia, Sniper Elite or Zombie Army make sense because they are ‘under the radar’ for the average gamer and having a game on Plus increases exposure for the series.
I’m just curious how the contracts and purchasing rights work in these scenarios. Does Sony drop a large amount of money to Activision in order to get these COD games? Maybe Activision are so replete with old COD games that they’re like, “Yes, please just take these old things off our hands! They’re taking up room in our attic! You can have them for free!”
Surely the small games they put on Plus like The Bridge, or Skulls of the Shogun, etc. are mostly there as a way to have indies get some exposure. I’d be interested to see data on how many of these games actually get played through PS Plus.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution In the case of Call of Duty, I think the win for Sony is in saying "LOOK! It's the biggest series in the world for free!" while for Activision it's like, if you haven't bought Black Ops 4 by now you're probably not gonna, so if they give it to you for free you might a) temporarily increase online engagement, and b) buy some DLC or microtransactions.
So both Sony and the publisher - in this case, Activision - do the math and make a deal.
@johncalmc So do you think it works like this (and I’m pulling numbers out of my derrière for discussion’s sake):
Sony and Activision negotiate together like you mentioned and Sony agrees “Ok, I’ll give you $100 for Black Ops 4”
Then they go to Focus Home Interactive and say “You want to promote A Plague Tale 2. I’ll give you $50 for the first game’s upgrade and you’ll get increased exposure for your sequel.”
Then they go to 2K and say “Nobody is buying your WWE game anymore, so I’ll give you $5 for it and maybe you’ll make money on the DLC.”
Something like that?
Do you think there is ever a scenario where maybe Capcom actually comes to Sony and says, “we need to sell Street Fight expansion packs. We’ll pay you $10 to include the base version of Street Fighter V on PS Plus.”
Or maybe the Devolver Digital comes to Sony and says “Here, you can have access to Fall Guys for free. You don’t even need to pay us for the privilege of putting it on PS Plus. We saw what you did for Rocket League and we’ll bet that we make money from your service in the long run.” ?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution total speculation on my part but I suspect that Activision probably sold the Plus version of BO4 to Sony because I would imagine that most CoD players will have moved on to the current trio of games available by now (MW, Cold War, Warzone). I imagine it's just one last paycheck for a game long abandoned by its publisher.
@Th3solution Yeah kinda. I mean I'm sure all of these people are talking to each other all of the time and either Sony will approach the publisher or vice versa. They just have to work out the deal so it works for both. I'm sure it works out in all different ways. But in the case of something like COD, for example, they've got marketing exclusivity deals in place already and some kinda PS Plus deal could have been made back then behind closed doors, even.
So like - and I'm totally making this up - how it might work is some numbers guy at Activision looks at how many copies COD sells based on time on the market. It sells loads the first week. Then less the next. Etc. Etc. A year later it's selling X amount. They'll also be looking at how much the average person spends on microtransactions and DLC and the online player count for older versions of COD. Then they'll probably look at it and say, at what point does the amount of money we make from selling old versions of COD become less than the amount of money we predict we'll make from DLC and microtransactions bought by the influx of new players.
They do the maths, make predictions, and a deal is done.
For smaller games like Fall Guys for example, the publisher is thinking that giving their game away on PS Plus is free publicity and worth any potential lost sales because they don't know whether the sales will happen or not. Rocket League was basically made by PS Plus, and so Fall Guys made sense.
There's all kinds of deals going on behind closed doors. I'd be really interested to see how some of them were struck.
@johncalmc Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I hadn’t considered that there are probably accounting numbers guys and gals who likely have an exact knowledge of when that tipping point for profit is.
I’m sure Sony also has their accounting dept. crunching numbers and says “we make X dollars off Plus subscriptions per month and we can budget X dollars to pay out for the games this quarter..” So some months will seem lean and some months will have surprisingly big (and more expensive) blockbusters. Like FF7R, which was surely more expensive to buy the rights to than WWE 2K Battlegrounds. Which by the way, looks absolutely atrocious. I was thinking in my head it was the other WWE games and thought there was an outside possibility that I might try it, but Battlegrounds and it’s 3/10 review score has me thinking it would have to be the last game on earth for me to try it. And even then, cleaning the toilet looks like more fun than that game.
@johncalmc@Th3solution@ralphdibny As part of the Epic vs Apple trial some of those email exchanges between Epic and Sony revealed that Epic had offered some exclusive content for PS+ as part of making a deal. It's possible that's quite a common thing and games / DLC etc just get bargained away as part of a bigger deal.
@render Interesting. So maybe they negotiate including a game on Plus when they are working out larger deals. So that’s how we ended up with PUBG on Plus 🤔
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Makes sense, they do that sort of things with films all the time. Studios say to directors, "if you make this franchise/blockbuster film then we will finance a smaller passion project of yours". That's normally why (but not always why) you get these highly rated directors peddling Random Action Film 9: The Actioning because their next film will be Pretentious Art House Film About Nothing starring a $1m/day actor that about 5 people will go and see.
It does seem likely as then I'd imagine both parties get something out of it, and they also both probably think they got the better deal 😀
Interesting point on the arthouse films though, I didn't realise that went on but would explain how some films that wouldn't have an audience get made.
So I just received a mail from Sony where they're offering me 12 months of PS+ for 50% off. Basically, it's 12 months for €30, which to me sounds like a very good deal. The main issue is that I never play online multiplayer anymore regardless of the system. I just prefer single-player games overall. However, this seems like a good opportunity for me to build up a backlog of PS+ games, both on PS4 and PS5. So if I decide to buy a PS5 in the future, I'll have a lot of games to play right from the get-go due to my PS+ backlog, which is nice considering how expensive games will be now on PS5. Another good thing is that I've had a problem before where my hard drive gave out and I lost all the save files I had on it and the only way to back them up to the cloud is if you have PS+. Granted, I've been careful to finish each game that I start up before I move on to the next one just so that I can avoid this problem again. But it would be nice not to have to worry about losing my save files if I have them backed up to the cloud.
With all this in mind, do you guys think it's worth it for me to invest in 12 months of PS+ for that price? Also, how have the PS+ offerings been like recently? Mostly good/bad?
@LtSarge
Over the course of a year I think you will get value for money. Even if you only play one game every couple of months you're looking at an average of €5 per game. Then maybe factor in discounts on other stuff you may be tempted to pick up in sales and it usually works out ok.
And as you mention, when (if) you get a ps5 you have an instant backlog to jump into.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
@LtSarge I’m in the same boat to most here seemingly in that I don’t play online much either.
The games are a mixed bag but it only takes a few to get your money back. The cloud save feature is a nice bonus too and one of the reasons I signed up back on the PS3 after having the YLOD and almost losing everything.
@JechtUltima@Sorteddan@Thrillho You guys bring up a lot of good points that I missed out, such as the PS+ collection on PS5 and PS+ discounts. It does sound like PS+ is worth getting based on your comments. However, this month's games honestly don't appeal to me at all, but considering this deal is available until the end of August and Sony usually announces next month's PS+ titles around that time, I think I'll wait and see if those titles manage to push me over the edge. Otherwise I don't know, two poor months in a row doesn't exactly give me confidence in the service. But I'm definitely leaning towards getting it now after reading what you guys had to say. So thank you for your input!
@LtSarge There will good months and bad months for everyone with PS +, but over the course of the year you will very likely have a number of titles that will interest you. €30 doesn't even buy one full priced game these days so for that price for a year it is a no brainer. But sometimes you just have roll with the bad months as it very unlikely every month will have stellar titles.
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