Now that the rush of E3 is over, we finally have the time to acknowledge just how crazy some of Sony’s PlayStation Plus related announcements were. Depending on your region, subscribers now have access to more than ten full games to download. It’s extraordinary when you take a step back and think about the value on offer.
Speaking with Joystiq, Sony’s ever-passionate Jack Buser has explained that the changes are all about amplifying the service, and not taking away from the features subscribers currently enjoy.
He said:
Everything that you’ve enjoyed from PlayStation Plus remains very much the same. It’s still the same PlayStation Plus.
So if you love the huge discounts, if you love the exclusive access to betas, if you love the other things that are also delivered by the service, you’re going to see that those other things are still a part of PlayStation Plus – the cloud saves, the automatic updates, all that other stuff.
The only change, according to Buser, is the number of free games on offer at any time. We’re sure no one’s complaining about that.
He continued:
What we’ve announced is that we’re amplifying the free games aspect of PlayStation Plus. We are really ratcheting that up, because that’s what the community told us they wanted to see.
Our only concern is our ISP – we currently have around 30GB of free content queued up in our PS3’s download list. Have you taken the plunge on PlayStation Plus yet?
[source joystiq.com]
Comments 12
I wanted to see if there would be Vita inclusion somewhere.
i think Plus is a great deal, but I think I'll need to swap out my bursting 60GB HDD, deleteing stuff is annoying!
@Savino Not really. Like I say, Plus is a good deal, but my gaming time is limited-and like the PushSquare team, one of my friends has 'too many' games etc from PSN that he hasn't time for.
Like I say, it's a good deal-but it's really not as if i'm out of pocket.
Those Sony PR dudes need a reality check. Probably they are so much on autopilot with run of the mill praise and dont even realise how full of it they are.PSN is selling games at prices MUCH higher than retail (and I am not talking used games here). Also those so called huge discounts for premium users are not so huge indeed. 2 bucks off for a 20 $ game is not very exciting. And they give for free some old games nobody is playing anymore, thank you very much.
@Gunhead PlayStation Plus is a completely additive experience, so if you don't like it there's a simple solution — don't buy it. Not every discount is fantastic, but some of them are very welcome, especially if you were intending to buy the game in the first place.
Also, I didn't realise the recently released Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown was an old game.
This may be enough for me to wrangle up some more PS+ Time
I have to admit I wasn't too impressed during the 1st year of Plus but I recently renewed and could not be happier. I was in the mood for a new game and now I got a bunch of 'em.
@KAL You definitely have to upgrade your hdd. I have a 750gb hdd so I won't have to delete anything for a good while. I've even seen 1tb hdds on sale now that should be compatible with PS3.
@KALofKRYPTON: Yeah...that hard drive needs HELP! My brother's been struggling with his 80 gig. I've been doing just fine with my 320 (still have over 100 free gigs at the moment), but you could go bigger very cheaply nowadays.
@Gunhead: They do give away new releases occasionally, y'know. Stacking, Awesomenauts, Hydrophobia Prophesy...it happens.
I am very disappointed they still haven't done anything for Vita support in Plus, though. I was REALLY hoping that rumor would be true, ESPECIALLY the cloud save backup for Vita files. The way the stupid Vita files work, that's the only feasible way I see for me to back anything up.
@Stuffgamer1 Totally agree. The save system on Vita is probably the worst thing about the console, and as someone who's already had their memory stick inexplicably wipe itself, I would love cloud support too.
I did the HDD upgrade last week b/c I got sick of deleting everything off of my old 80GB and I wanted inFamous 2 and Ratchet and Clank, which I think is 30GB right there. The biggest headache was installing firmware 4.11 from a USB drive after putting in the new HDD. You have to DL it on a PC and put it in 2 folders PS3/UPDATE and the USB has to be FAT32. I tried several times on a 512mg USB before switching to a 16GB which worked first try. That was after backing up everything to a 32GB external USB HDD. Good news - the PS3 formatted a WD Blue 500GB I had in my old laptop I wasn't using even though it had both C and D and was NTFS in Win 7. 465GB when finished. I have 4 accounts and they were all there after I restored the back-up. I think you have to do trophy sync before changing HDD.
As for PS+, money well spent.
@rjejr
Yeah, having to install the new firmware from a usb drive was kind of a pain.
@Stuffgamer1 I'm tempted to get a PS3 Slim 320BG in a few months. My 60 gets noisier as months go by-so a relatively quiet Blu-Ray player alone would be nice!
I'd keep the 60Gb for PS2 games.
Does anyone have experience sharing an account over 2 PS3's?
Installing firmware from a USB drive? I never had to do anything like that when I upgraded the hard drive in my old PS3...
@get2sammyb: I still have no idea how they couldn't let such an insanely massive system design flaw into the finished product, though I have a developer friend who claims it's totally understandable. They probably thought it was the easiest way to consolidate the fact that retail games save your data straight to the game, and just made it the norm for the machine. Good news is, he says they SHOULD be able to patch in a save data utility type option...if they ever bother. I'm unclear on how aware they are of this issue. I submitted a PS Blog Share idea regarding the situation, but I don't think they actually posted it.
@KALofKRYPTON: Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I originally replaced the hard drive in my BC model 80 gig system, but the thing crapped out on me in late 2010 so I had to get a Slim. Bought the Move bundle with the 320 gig and it's been working great ever since. I miss BC, though...definitely a good idea to keep your 60 gig handy while it still works.
I don't have personal experience with it, but I do know it's not hard to do. You can sign in to the account on two systems no problem. Keep in mind that there's a limit to how many machines you can activate to play your downloaded games on, though. Used to be 5, but they changed it to 2 a little while back.
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