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PS Plus Premium has, if we’re being totally honest, turned out to be a huge disappointment. Sony’s top-tier subscription promised cloud streaming and classic games, and while it’s ultimately delivered on those vows, the lack of meaningful additions of late – along with the service’s seriously flawed logic – has left fans wanting to downgrade.
The positive is that PS Plus Extra is proving serious value for money, especially when you factor in this month’s 25 per cent off Black Friday discount. Many fans were hoping they could downgrade to the middle tier, and then extend their subscription at a lower price. Unfortunately, after some investigation, we’ve learned that it’s impossible.
You can notify Sony that you want to change your plan at any time, but you can only stack subscriptions to your active membership. This ultimately means, if you’re currently a PS Plus Premium subscriber until, say, 31st December, you’d only be able to take advantage of the aforementioned Black Friday discount for the top tier – even if you’ve told Sony you want to downgrade when your existing plan concludes.
The same is true, of course, if you’re currently a PS Plus Extra member and want to return to PS Plus Essential. It’s all quite messy, and likely related to the creaky structure of the PS Store, but the bottom line is that members are feeling slighted here. The only way you could downgrade and take advantage of the deal is if your current plan is set to expire before the Black Friday sale concludes.
The real kicker here is, as alluded to above, that PS Plus Premium is looking more and more like a bad deal. The only additions this month were a selection of PS3 Ratchet & Clank games – classic titles, yes, but they can only be cloud streamed. Sony will argue that its top tier exists primarily for cloud streaming anyway; we believe most people subscribed on the promise of retro games, which have dried up already.
Comments 68
Oh damn, what a nuisance! I was going to add a year of Extra to my sub, but I'm subbed to Premium right now.
Streaming of games is not something I am interested at all, so no way am I giving Sony another year of money for it!
This reminds me of the problem that they used to have on the PS Store. If a game was on sale (or not) and you wanted to buy it, but it was in your PS+ library already, you couldn't do it.
And the hits just keep coming for Premium. I feel so sorry for the folks stuck with that tier. No other way to describe it other than a dumpster fire unfortunately.
@jrt87 I still find it crazy cloud saves are locked behind a subscription
can you get the PS Extra Black Friday deal from Amazon and apply it when the current PS Premium expires?
Nice to see the change in the title. That should attract more clicks
And yes, it goes without saying that this is BS. I have premium and I'm only interested in Extra, so I'll just have to wait till my subscription lapses, unfortunately.
@Verzion214 Fair feedback, but I feel maybe you're looking for the type of content we don't deliver here. We're not a broadsheet newspaper and have never purported to be.
Furthermore, several users wrote to me about this over the past 48 hours, so clearly it matters to them.
I was a little bit annoyed that I couldn't drop down to the Extra tier and take advantage of the discount there.
I would like to see Premium just rolled in to Extra at this point, but I'm also expecting it to get better over the coming year. All of the Ratchet and Clank games they added have made improved my opinion of it at least.
On the other hand, my sub expires in a few days. I could just wait and get Extra when that happens 🤔🤷
@Verzion214
I mean it seems like news Playstation fans might be interested in to me. I not sure what the problem is here.
@trev666 It has to be paid for somehow.
The margins on the consoles themselves are slim.
There's nothing stopping folk backing up saves to a USB pen so it shouldn't matter.
In response to some of the other comments, this is absolutely newsworthy as personally I was scouring the comments to see if I could downgrade.
I'd have 100% downgraded if I could but fully understand why they don't let you. Not just the loss of income, but someone would probably dig out the numbers on how many people downgraded eventually, which would be terrible optics.
right now it wont let me renew extra with the discount,
my sub expires on 24th so Hopefully i can then
Meh, an extra £16 for premium over extra, and for that you get some classic games and the ability to stream a large ps3 catalogue (plus everything else). Seems like a decent deal to me. Would be weird to have two separate subscription levels in effect. I guess being able to get an additional period of time of extra by dropping the premium subscription would be nice though, and thinking about, a simple reversal of the upgrade path they already offer.
It's no Game Pass like.
@jrt87 Glad you got first post, that's pretty much me. Our "Essential" expires in a couple of. days but I think we're done. Though I would probably be suckered back in for PS+ Essential 1/2 price for $30 at Wal-Mart or something but that's my ceiling, I don't need the rest, plenty to play.🤷
@solocapers xbox do cloud saving for free
and you cant move ps5 save games to usb
Been Plus for years... now "Essential". Never payed more than $39 for it. Always been a great deal for my needs
If not broken why mess with it. Glad I stayed put.
@Korgon Don't go feeling sorry for me mate - I'm perfectly happy with premium.
For £1 per month I get the option to stream, and that's all I'm in it for. With the huge number of titles on Extra, you could use all your bandwidth and time downloading games to see if you want to play them. If I'm interested in a title, I can try it first via streaming to see if I like it. If I do, I can download, if I don't, I've not wasted my time and bandwidth.
Whilst no one can argue that this tier has served older titles well, I didn't buy a PS5 to play games older than PS4, so I'm not bothered in the slightest.
For me, premium is delivering exactly what I want.
Sony itself is the middle tier of online services. Miles ahead of Nintendo, but there always seems to be these odd hiccups that seem to give kind of a middle finger to their fans. I'm not a fanboy so I'm kinda ambivalent. I managed to get premium for a good chunk cheaper than Extra for the year so I don't mind, but I've used Premium level stuff maybe a few times.
@Titntin
Fair enough. Glad your enjoying it!
There is a 100% chance that in March when my subscription comes up for renewal, I will not renew at the Premium level. Most likely ill just go back to Basic. This has been a huge waist. I already have gamepass so I have plenty to play. Always best to vote with your wallet with stuff like this.
I was hoping to downgrade to Extra from Premium since my Membership doesn't end until Dec.26th.
Also the easiest way to fix this is to just cancel your current membership and downgrade but I understand if you have months and months left you probably don't want to do that.
I might just cancel mine to downgrade since I'm not really into streaming old games and the classics.
@jrt87 I didnt realise PS5 saves couldnt be backed up. Thats silly. Suppose thats to stop modding but yea, thats not ideal.
Nintendo dont do cloud saves either though unless you pay for their sub IIRC
I wanted to downgrade to Extra as well, because i doubt I would be using the functions of premium the coming year. But it's fine, with the current deal premium is 10 euros cheaper than if I would have just downgraded to Extra without a deal. So ill just renew with premium for a year. Still have some games to play on extra so ill just keep it for another year and see what ill do next year.
@jrt87 Ya, personally I dont really see much value in PS+ at all. I'm new to the PS platform but I think I'll just be buying games on a game-by-game basis.
@thedevilsjester Still is an issue on older Plus titles,sadly! They did change it a little while ago obviously,but seems like in those instances they release a "plus" version & there's the store version.
@get2sammyb Despite Playstation management claiming to always be "listening" to feedback whether the blog/Twitter etc.,the utter silence they've given to PS Deluxe regions & indeed the entire subject of people asking where are the ps1/ps2 classics additions has me shaking my head!
I went to downgrade and it said it would take effect from when my premium expires. Gave up and just extended the premium subscription. Only £12 a year more, and I'm sure at some stage they'll make it worth it. 😂
My subscription to Premium ends in 10 days. So I'm left with the choice of waiting that long and seeing if the promotion is still going, risking having to pay $100 for Extra, or choosing just to stick with Premium for $90 now.
I guess I'll wait a few days before I make my choice and see if they fix this.
@TrickyDicky99
People didn't buy a PS5 to just play older games. They bought it to play newer games and subbed to Premium to have the OPTION to play retro titles, because maybe they enjoy both. See the difference.
@Verzion214 "..Also have you got any evidence as to why people signed up for Premium?..."
Due to PS Now loophole, a lot of us got many years of Premium as an almost free upgrade from PS+ when this service was started.
@get2sammyb yet you have clearly separated News and Soapbox articles for years now.
I think Verizon guy was right in what he said and there has been far too many rushed reactions of late sparking outrage and almost coming across as click bate desperation.
I think we all just really like this site and don’t want to see it become what makes IGN and other such poor quality.
I mentioned this in the PS+ thread. It's a little cheeky on Sony to do this.
Some people don't want to resub to the higher tiers, but keep the Essential service for the games, and cloud saves. Just because it's only X amount for this tier or that tier doesn't make it justified.
@jrt87 Agreed. I know for a fact a few of the games they gave away for plus I bought straight out when they released. In some instances it peeved me off but I would much rather have the ability to play those niche titles when I cost then for them to be locked behind my ps+ sub
@Verzion214 if the article lends voice to a minority of users (assuming you believe they are a minority), it becomes all the more important.
Btw, this was the first thing I tried to do when the sale went live. Therefore, this post represents something strongly felt by a set of users. That gives it a very strong purpose.
Extra on its own is excellent value, so it kind of sucks for the people who are stuck paying more for just about nothing. Premium did look like a bad deal to me from the get-go so I always avoided it.
@TrickyDicky99 I got PS Premium because of the glitch (link to buy PS now which wasnt available anymore) when they were converting PS Now to Premium (it was for £49.99) and im sure lots of ppl did the same.
PS Extra is definitely enough for me, but even if i had to pay for PS Premium it is a great value with the number of PS5 (and other) games on there
@Verzion214 Push Square is an anti-Playstation PlayStation site. About 90% of the commenters actively hate PlayStation. Other PS news sites tend to have very low quality articles, so I'm not aware of any better site yet.
If I can get Premium at a discount like this each year I don't see the problem. These people are wining when they can get Premium for the same price as Extra right now. People will just cry about anything nowadays.
@Verzion214 I agree with you and based on what Sammy said to you I really need to stop coming here. I just hate negative energy and that's seems like all I get when I come here.
Just renewed my extra sub. I really like the extra tier as it gives me what i want. Sucks for those that are not happy with premium and can not drop down to extra at the reduced price.
@Verzion214 @Jacko11 So you want them to just write what the news is and offer no opinion whatsoever? (unless is a positive opinion!) So basically you want the PlayStation equivalent to CNN 🤷
I like that you can open an article here and know which person wrote what without even looking at who wrote it, the best part of this site is that every editor has their own unique writing style and personality.
I think Playstationlifestyle would better fit your needs, there everyone pretty much writes the same and you will get no opinions on anything one way or the other.
I am one of the "minority" who couldn't get the Extra deal due to my innocent attempt to try out Premium in the last couple of months of my subscription (it would be due to expire at 20/12). There wasn't a clear warning that I wouldn't be able to renew to any of the tiers below Premium before the subscription would have ended.
I would really like the freedom of choosing something different without any of these limitations. I'm not asking anything wild from Sony. In fact, it's kind of simple as an idea. I'm sure it would take Sony more than a few days to add such an option. This issue exists because all these years PS Plus didn't have any tiers and there was no problem adding additional months to an active subscription.
So, I'm glad this article exists because I thought I would be made fun of if I started posted on social media. I wish Sony would find a solution before the Black Friday deals end. But I'm not optimistic...
Since Australia doesn't have cloud streaming bought 100% for retro, getting disgustingly ripped
Removed - unconstructive feedback
PS plus as a whole stinks. Just give us free online play, or at a heavily discounted rate. You can keep the rest, it stinks.
I signed to premium just to try it for a few months, not to be locked in it. I play over wi-fi not ethernet and streaming is unplayable. It sucks that PS extra cost more than PS premium offer. And its a lot of money for just a 25% discount.
It does seem that this site has a lot more downbeat articles about PlayStation than positive ones. I found I ended up feeling a bit down about my favourite hobby after reading through the write ups and comments, so don’t get on here so much lately. I agree with the person earlier who said in many respects, we don’t realise how lucky we are as gamers these days. I remember paying 40 notes for games like ridge and rage racer, crazy taxi, cool boarders 2 etc. These games only had a few courses, but I played them to death. Nowadays for £100, you’ve got more games than you’ll ever play, including older games with trophy support. For the record, I bought a year of premium to see what it was like, and haven’t been disappointed. For £1.33 more than extra a month, I don’t really see how anyone can complain.
I honestly can't think of a simple system around it, unless people can opt out of their higher tier with instant effect.
A system where people's paid subscriptions grade down in the future seems really complicated to implement to me.
@Titntin Totally agree! I am also using the service in the same way. No issues with it from me, serving the purpose.
@bigkingy There are a lot of us here who completely share your opinion. Editorial choices are often based on fake outrage to attract the fake outrage mob. I get that hits equals money but short sightedly going for the outrage brigade is a huge turn off for decent people here to enjoy and celebrate their fun hobby. Genuine gamers having fun are a far better longer term bet than serial complainers jumping on a bandwagon.
I get that theres a storry here, its the tone of reporting I dislike, especially when the writer has obvious talent and can write more balanced pieces when they want.
As far as I am aware, the situation with downgrading your sub has always been like this, its not a new thing, so whilst pushing for a change is perfectly reasonable, stamping your feet and pretending Sony are evil is a rediculous take, given some substance by pieces like this. Stick with Push mate, there are good proper gamers here that share your enthusiasm!
Thanks for this article. I didn’t choose PS Plus Premium, I was assigned that tier because I had a PS Now subscription. I would prefer to have PS Plus Extra because that combines what I liked about my PS Plus and PS Now subscriptions, but it seems I’m locked into this tier unless I want to pay more money to downgrade.
All I can do is wait 8 months for my subscription to lapse and then sign up for a year of PS Plus Extra for more money than an extra year of Premium would cost right now.
At least you saved me some time, because I’m sure I would have been trying to figure out where the downgrade option was hidden, thinking there must be a way to do this.
I don’t understand why some people are angry that you pointed this out. I’m grateful.
@STOBO it's the state of the internet, I'd say. Only what's negative sells.
@KidRisky I think the problem is with the wording.
Removed - unconstructive feedback
@Jacko11 @naruball I'd like you to both actually explain where in that article I was overly "slating" PlayStation, where the "clickbait headline" is and how it was an "outrage" piece. Here, read it again: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/10/sony-seemingly-scraps-ps-plus-game-expiry-dates
The headline isn't clickbait; it simply isn't. Using the word "seemingly", there was no jumping to conclusions. Furthermore, I even wrote it could be a glitch that Sony might fix. The rest of the article is fact.
I look forward to your explanations.
@LiamCroft in multiple parts of the article you’ve linked to it comes across as inherently negative.
The article existing in the way that it does, in light of the constant soapbox pieces and negative spins on articles about how PlayStation is doing everything wrong is apparent.
Always so quick to throw stones and you was even called out by the majority of the comment section here in the update:
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/10/ps-plus-expiry-dates-return-to-the-ps-store-because-sony
Were I said “almost coming across as click bate desperation” which was my wordage, many an article has done this.
The article is fact with a negative undertone.
There are many in this article alone that have also questioned this including @verizion214
Plus on every article lately its pointed out in the comments by a solid amount, especially so on the link above. Its just usually its removed for “unconstructive feedback” like my other comment above on this article. The only one removed actually, which is strange.
I do appreciate you taking the time to respond though there seems to be a lot of unwarranted negativity lately surrounding PlayStation on PushSquare. I really don’t believe the current situation is that bad and I think this is possibly the most exciting time to be a PlayStation gamer in years.
@Jacko11 There’s a negative undertone because what the topic of that article isn’t really a good thing. It was corrected a few days later, but at the time we didn’t know that, right?
Concerning negativity, I find myself in the same situation as you. I’m maybe halfway through Ragnarok after 25 hours of play, and absolutely loving it. I have a backlog of like 25 new games to play, and there loads to look forward to in the coming months. I’m excited, and so is everyone else on the editorial team. I think if you asked Sammy, Rob, and Stephen, you’d find they’re pretty happy with PlayStation at the moment too.
What’s frustrating about Sony, though, is they seem to slip up sometimes on the most simple of things. They’re a multi-billion dollar company that make seemingly silly mistakes, and we can’t just let them get a pass. We praise them when they do good; we criticise them when we do bad. The site has always done that and will continue to.
I understand sometimes things can look negative, but believe me, everyone on staff still loves PlayStation and is more engaged than ever before. We’re all here because we love the system and its games; that’s why it’s a bit annoying when something goes wrong. 👍
They should just have two tiers tbh.
@Verzion214 This is as much a news site as CNN or Fox News, it's all 100% editorials. Period.
why did people jump to the premium service BEFORE they even knew how it would play out? isn't it common sense to watch from the sidelines for a few months to see if this tier was worth talking about? the PR team won again i guess. let it be a lesson and learn from it. perhaps one day premium tier will be worth its asking price, but sony has a long way to go.
I am in the same boat. Was hoping i could use cd keys to just sub to the middle teir but no. It just upped me until april at the top teir. It still saved me money but the top teir isnt cutting it for me. May have to let the whole thing expire then re up at the mid teir. Uggg.
@TrickyDicky99 If that were the case, then why are emulators for older systems so popular now? With millions of downloads across PC, Linux, Android and Mac, it proves that people still want a way to play older games. If you don't like it, that's fine, but you surely don't speak for everyone.
What an absolute joke! I just bought the Amazon black Friday deal to get PS plus extra to 'stack' on my PS plus premium membership that expires 14th Dec. Only when trying to buy the deal in the PS store, and it said 'oops something went wrong, did I realise that I've been done over by Sony. Have been a PS Plus member since 2014 and this current state of the service is an absolute shambles. I don't know how Sony thought that this was a good design idea for it. I'll not be renewing anything come December. Nice one Sony!
@trev666 I would love to see my local backup of saves make a return.
@Verzion214 Are you ignorant or dumb? Sony is 100% at fault here. Im signed up to extra and I wanted to move back to essential ps plus which would of saved me £10 with the black Friday 25% off. But no, I have to wait until my ps plus extra runs out which is in 10 days after the deals to move back to essential, so the £38 I just added to my account is for no reason…
@Verzion214 sorry I was probably a bit pissed when I wrote that. But Sonys extra and premium is absolutely not worth it though. You’re paying nearly £100 to play some old games, and yes some are new and decent but is not worth the extra £50. On xbox they give you a wide range of newly released and old games that people will actually play for a really good price. Sony are just cheap nowadays
I definitely don't extend extra even for discount since I've finished most games that I wanted and rest is not on the top list to play .Back to essential to play online is the only thing I subscribe .
@bigkingy It's if there are articles showing bad things , since Sony is less Japanese it's becoming worse since that guy from England who is just to spin more revenue .
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