Big Discounts on PS Plus Subs, PS5 Consoles, and PSVR2 in Days of Play Promotion

So no discounts for people who already have a subscription at the tier they want to stay at?

" What's more, a bunch of Sony-published PS5 games are going for $20 less than the usual asking price. "

Why do I feel like "$20 less" is going to be $10 more than they're usually on sale for? 🤷‍♂️

Nice to see the PS VR2 sale, shows Sony hasn't forgotten about it. W/ the $100 off PS VR2 and the $50 off PS5 does that mean the accessory will finally cost less than the console it attaches to?

@Americansamurai1 yeah, been that way since they introduced the new tiers and it sucks

I hope that they have some deeper discounts on games. It seems that they have the same exact sales on same games every other week.

No discount for PS+ Essential 12 months? oh well...

@Voltan guess I won't be keeping premium when my subscription ends. O well.

@Americansamurai1 And it appears that the Plus discount for members who want to upgrade is only for the remainder of the sub, not a fresh year at a new tier-at least if I am reading the Days of Play website correctly. That would get me a slightly discounted upgrade for a whopping few weeks.

As a Plus member from the start, I was hoping for more, especially after a significant price increase with no new added features. I may let my sub lapse after all.

The game discounts don’t look great either.

@Westernwolf4 really think Sony is trying to be more like Nintendo nowadays. Never lowering their prices on their first party more than 20-30 off

So my PS+ Essential is up in August, if I were to re-up now… would the new sub be from August or from when I re-up?

Yeah, seems like I'll have to let my sub expire in September to resub during Black Friday.. because Sony is a bunch of loonies?
I have enough owned backlog games to be able to hold for couple of months but making users lapse and wait for next sale oppo is lunacy, not to mention losing money.

Might pick up rise of the ronin for $50 or maybe wolong complete edition depending on its discount. Nothing new on the horizon until Star Wars Outlaws for me.

Is there usually a corresponding PSN sale?

@Americansamurai1 eh? 20% off? You could often buy FW for half price, Curry’s currently selling Ghost of Tshushima for £17….

@themightyant yeah I've also started buying more physical. Be it games or movies.

So first they remove PS Plus retail cards/keys. Then they jack up the price. Now they no longer offer discounts on their own sales... Every time I want to say Xbox is the sucky one, PS comes to remind me maybe not. I am getting too close for comfort to just dumping the consoles and going back to PC. I don't want to...but I'm pretty much on the ledge at this point. Every week the consoles want to smack me in the face a little bit harder. Every time I get closer to saying "PC is so expensive, it's wiser to just stay where I am with consoles" the consoles remind me the next wave of nickel and diming is approaching so it's break even either way.

PS3 was so consumer friendly after the launch disaster. PS4 remained somewhat consumer friendly. PS5 feels like an expensive Nintendo at this point. Having to put up with just one Nintendo was bad enough. I know that's Jim's legacy and the current leaders aren't responsible for getting here, but who knows when or if they fix it. They're banking on the online being what people come for, so no backing down on charging, while also being one of only two vendors to lock their cloud saves behind a paywall, where, ironically, Nintendo is the only other one, and they're charging less than half as much. When Nintendo is the cheaper option, you know you're in trouble.

At least I can cheer for the $100 PSVR2 discount it should have received a year and a half ago. Especially with PC support incoming maybe that means something. This might be the most promotion PSVR2 has received since launch day. Glad they found them behind the containers of Jimbo bobbleheads.

@Americansamurai1 @themightyant I used to be all physical but eventually you just run out of space to STORE all those games and I went digital-only. I have crates and crates and crates and crates of games going back to Atari carts! Honestly those Atari carts are worth more than any of the latest "day 1 patch to make it work right" physical games.

While browsing the PC stores I noticed you can get GoT a week after launch cheaper than I've ever seen it on PS Store lol. Sony's going to have a heck of a time figuring this "PC thing" out. Unless they start restricting games to their own launcher and price controls which would also be amusing to watch them try to create a console on PC.

I also noticed that Sony of all companies originally messed with DRM-free on GOG for older titles. That's a shocker, and so very un-sonlylike.

@colonelkilgore No this is the rub, assuming you are on Essentials then you will get 30% off the next two or three months. If you are already on Extra then you can get 25% off the next 12 months, so the best way for you would be to do the 30% upgrade and then in the same offer week do a 25% extension.
I think that is right at least and at this point Sony are really encouraging people to just let their subs expire. My Extra is up in September so I could get 25% off the year but I'm so disappointed in Sony these days that I'm tempted to let it expire and see what Balck Friday / Xmas brings.

@NEStalgia agree PS3 era was great, I still remember the $1 and $5 sales they used to do all the time.

By new subs does it mean if it has expired? Or legitimately new subs that haven't tried before. Mine expires on the 6th due to days of play last year too, so hopefully it's the former 😅

Stellar Blade discount? That's the only one I'm looking to buy soon. Actually, would have bought it last week, until I remembered Days of Play were this week, so I postponed my order.

@CaptD "I think that is right at least and at this point Sony are really encouraging people to just let their subs expire. "

That may not be accidental. If everyone lets their subs expire and then re-ups they can tell shareholders they gained millions and millions of new subscribers.

@themightyant Ahh, yeah, I always forget people do the selling thing. Never really got into that. Never really seemed worth it to get a few dollars in store credit, and never did the "buy a game and beat it in weeks so you can sell it at high value" thing. You can sell online, but then there's shipping so you're still not making a lot. So as a result I have dangerous piles of games stacked celing high. If you're not careful, Yoshi will do a ground pound on your head.

Sony's the odd one out right now. Even NINTENDO lets third party sellers sell game keys still, but seems to control pricing anyway. And XB still does actual keys like Steam. Only Sony reeled everything into direct-only sale. (While simultaneously launching an expedition into PC??)

I figure once they do lose the retail angle EU may crack down on them like Apple for the noncompetitive prices. Romania already tried on their own.

@NEStalgia
“yeah, I always forget people do the selling thing. Never really got into that. Never really seemed worth it to get a few dollars in store credit, “

This is only really an issue if you buy new then sell after a long time. If you get a game second hand once it’s been out a while you’ll rarely spend more than £10 max on any game after trade back.

@thefourfoldroot1 It's been a good while since I last looked at such pricing, but I know the GameStop pricing in the US basically they'll sell old games for $20-30 or so, they'll buy it back for $3-8 but if you buy and sell at the right times you get mulipliers on points etc, it's all done through points/store credits etc. I did buy used back in the PS3 era and late golden age PC era (physical PC games are not a myth! I was there!) a lot, but never really sold. Just never seemed worth it for the few bucks you get back. Of course buying/selling is a monopoly in the US, so that's why, not sure if there's more than the failing GAME over on your side of the pond. There's always selling through Amazon or Ebay but between shipping, and the store cuts on Amazon etc it's still seeming hardly worth it unless you're doing the buy on launch, sell quickly thing.

I think I'd rather push for getting digital prices down than trying to salvage the poor physical game trade in the US. It's more like that on PC of course, and it only takes a $2000 video card to do it!

The psvr2 games there releasing on ps plus seemed awesome... i was so proud for a second... but then you see they have the balls lock it behind the premium tier pay wall you cheap cheap hateful japs

@NEStalgia
That indeed seems terrible over there!

I use CEX over here (GAME isn’t really a thing any more). A quick glance at some of the last physical games I played shows FFXVI - £25 purchase price, £16 trade back; Infinite wealth - £35 purchase price, £23 trade in; Hubris £25 purchase price, £16 trade back…

Compared to some of these being £50-70 on the digital store (not Hubris of course, VR has very cheap games to make up for the high hardware price), which makes the convenience of digital very expensive. Thats not even considering the advantage of having some games physical for better PS5 performance or to avoid certain patches. These things make physical worth it for me.

Plus I have sometimes made money on the exchange. For example, I bought Blue Reflection for £22 and traded it back for £50 (it’s still holding strong at £36 trade in value).

@NEStalgia For example with Stellar Blade, I got the disc for $68 because of my $5 monthly GameStop thing. I traded it in and got back $40 in store credit due to some promo. So I paid $28 to play it and had $40 towards next game, hard to beat that.

@FatalBubbles Yeah, if you do the buy it when it's brand new and sell it really fast, at the right time, it can work out ok. OTOH people rail against digital and lack of ownership rental services like Plus and Game Pass as a rental, but you played $28 to play a single game within a few weeks vs much less than that to play games with more time to play them before they devalue. It's really a different flavor of the same thing except the revenue ends up with platforms/publishers instead of middleman retail chains. Not arguing AGAINST physical, digital sanity depends on it, but some people (not you) miss that forest through the trees.

I have a Pro membership but I'll probably cancel next year, used to use the discount on digitial currency but they curtailed that. I really only got it for the paper Game Informer mag, which now they quietly reduced to digital only, and GI now sells a separate paper mag sub that's cheaper than the Pro membership anyway. Stupid on GS's part.

@themightyant my favorite here at GameStop is they will open copies of new releases and sell them at HIGHER than retail price (so you'll see $75, $80, or more!) priced games, because they factor out the bonus multipler on their points program so that a used copy of a new game, after all your used points/credit multipliers comes out to....list price.

And here, new games aren't really cheaper than list when new, with the lone exception of Walmart who sometimes discounts by a few dollars. We had Best Buy and Amazon competing with games last gen that were $20% off at launch, but then Best Buy bailed out, and then so did Amazon, so then it's $70 across the board ($60 Nintendo) except saving some pennies at WM.)

But you also have to remember, IDK about CEX, but business at GS is so bad most of the store doesn't even have games at all anymore, it's tshirts, and foam light sabers, and baby yoda keychains. Like the back 30% of the store has games, And the rest is just ThinkGeek merch now. So the volume of available used games isn't even what it was anymore, and new games you basically have to preorder and have them hold it because the store only gets a few loose copies. And most of those are open and tagged for $80.

I'm not saying you can't work the system and make it work similarly to how it works in your neck of the woods, I'm sure you can, but it's a lot of work and planning. I don't want to have to play a 4x strategy game with real money just to buy video games lol

@NEStalgia
What you describe sounds exactly like GAME over here, and that’s going under. CEX is purely games, retro games, some collectors editions and old DVDs. I think I went into one that had some posters.

The only problem is, as with any second hand store, it’s hot and miss what is in there. I’ve still got about £200 worth of credit but not much to spend it on. Especially as they have few VR games.

@NEStalgia I have no need to own games as I RARELY replay something so that's why I find GamePass to be great for me. I can play it and move on for $18 if I got a month of it, I use the rewards and pay $0 so it's even better. I've used the Ubisoft+ $18/month thing to "rent" games as well. I fully grasp what you're saying. In this case the buy/trade for the disc was my most efficient option.

I am keeping my Pro membership at least until the PS5 Pro comes out so I can extra bonus trade on my PS5 to reduce the cost of the Pro.

@themightyant @thefourfoldroot1 Yep, GAME and Gamestop are very close parallels from what I've heard. Didn't GameStop actually own or part own GAME at sometime?

There's a bit of history with GameStop. They were actually a spinoff from Barnes & Noble, the predatory mega bookstore that devoured the music and books business before Amazon happened. They spun off games to be "hip" and cash in, basically on stupid kids that don't understand money. They then used the B&N/Walmart strategy of mass consolidation. All the other good chains that were around, Babbages, Electronics Boutique, quite a few others, they bought up, rebranded, then shut down. A few other startups came and went briefly, but few could stand up to their stranglehold. They engineered the closed loop buying where they try to entrap customers into their points system and buy/sell loop.

GameStop is the PRIMARY reason the industry turned to DLC to begin with, after the "online pass" thing. It was because of GameStop's used business. Publishers didn't really care about individual used game sales but GameStop engineered used games as effectively a competitor to actual publisher sales, as a PRIMARY sales strategy (including selling new as used), manipulating customers into the used chain and running that as their primary profit driver. When you go back over industry trends, online pass, DLC, Matricks DRM strategy in league with the inudstry, most of it traces back to GameStop conquering most US game sales and converting used games into the primary sales tool where all profit goes to them alone, and the industry combating it and then getting drunk on what they could get away with. Once they discovered digital and bypassing GameStop entirely...well here we are. Of course Walmart and Best Buy became bigger game sellers, but a lot of that is just because GameStop devoured itself.

It's a shame because the individual stores used to be nice places at times. But they were never as nice as the chains they devoured. I remember their transformation though, they were bad even in 2017, but I went in there at switch release time and it was still good old GameStop. I went in about 2 months later for a game, and most of the store had no games anymore, it was just wall to wall junk merch and games were on the back wall. Somehow...they're still there. Which I'm glad about, yet I don't intend to shop there. Back in the early 00's they were still great stores, but they were mostly still the former chains they replaced back then.

(Do ANY VR games come on disc? I thought PSVR1 was the end of that.) OT: I bought Skyrim VR for PC for $13 on sale. Not sure if I'll build a big rig yet, but with PSVR2 coming to PC, I'll finally be able to play that game at a good quality if I do

@FatalBubbles yeah you're doing it "right" and if you can get the physical buy/sell to work in that timeframe it works. I don't think it works for me, but I see it as viable where it does.

Yeah that's a good idea on the whole pro/trade thing!

I guess still no way to downgrade to a lower tier, therefore no buy for me.

@Fyz306903 yes, prices on most not listed yet ,but the list of titles is out thanks to psblog.
https://blog.playstation.com/2024/05/28/days-of-play-2024-comes-to-playstation-store/

@Americansamurai1 This is the exact vibe I get as well.

I've just paid for this month premium sub but now I've downgraded to the lowest tier because the monthly games are rubbish, and I only need the online for Helldivers 2

So they're not putting a discount on PS Plus essential? What a load of crap.

@Athrum You are the second one who comment this. Please read carefully, there is 30% discount for all new sub, which includes essential.

@mrbone That's the same as not having them if you are subbed (which is my case and the case for tons of people).

@Athrum Oh well, this is how it has been since they use a tiered system, and I am one of them. Worse for me, as my current sub expires on June 10th . I just need to time correctly next time.

Gamestop formerly known as EB Games formerly known as Electronic Boutique has largely become ToyStop, given the amount of Toy and game merchandise they sell. Seriously what is the point of going all the way to Gamestop for a digital code when you can get the exact same thing online via your console and most digital content will go on sale unlike physical copies or digital codes( which never go on sale) I will almost always go for the cheapest option when getting games digital or physical since there are always games that don't drop in price or go on sale.

@Americansamurai1 I renewed my Deluxe (my region version of Premium) last month for 25% off. It might be a region thing? I always waited for a discount all year to renew, last month it appeared and can only be used to extend by 1 year. I tried to search for this promotion everywhere and cannot find anything. Weird that Sony does not publish this even if it was only for select regions

The wording in the PS App makes it sound like you'll get the 30% off for upgrading when your current subscription ends, but the price they say you'll pay is the normal full price. I was considering upgrading to Premium, not be because I want it, but because with the discount it's less than regular price Extra. But apparently I just get 30% the rest of my existing sub? So I save 30% of $6 lol

What a bummer this is. I like Extra, and I think it's worth the price, but it's really a shame they don't give loyal subs anything. Even if they did like 15% off for people who want to stay put and 30% for new and upgrades.