The Revamped PS Plus Lineup Is Stacked, Once You Make Sense Of It - Kotaku

Selene Vassos, Eivor, Miles Morales, and Norman Reedus stand stoically in a promotional poster for PS Plus. — Image: Sony

With the big PS Plus relaunch on the horizon (get your Zero Dawn jokes out of here), we finally have an idea of what exactly to expect. Today, in a blog post, Sony outlined everything—games, streaming offerings, a partnership with Ubisoft—coming to the service. It’s a lot. Let’s break it down.

PS Plus 2.0, first officially announced in March, is a total revamp of the long-running PS Plus service, essentially folding all of PlayStation’s disparate subscriptions into one. It’s available in three tiers, which you can read more about right here, but the general breakdown is:

PS Plus Essential: More or less the standard PS Plus subscription people sign up for today. $10 a month, $60 a year.
PS Plus Extra: Same as PS Plus Essential, but it also grants access to a games-on-demand library comprising “hundreds” of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games. $15 a month, $100 a year.
PS Plus Premium: On top of the games library included in PS Plus Extra, you can also stream and download PlayStation games dating back to the PS1 era—kind of like the current PS Now service—and you get time-limited trials of new first-party PlayStation games. $18 a month, $120 a year.

What games are part of the library?

Though the option to play PS5 exclusives at no extra cost was an enticing selling point of PS Plus 2.0, the initial lineup leaves a bit to be desired. Just three PS5 exclusives are available at launch: Returnal, Destruction AllStars, and the Demon’s Souls remake. Pour one out for Rivet.

Selene Vassos grapples to a ledge in Returnal on PS5. — *Returnal*.

The library is at least built out by an impressive array of cross-gen games, available on both PS4 and PS5. Highlights include Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Ghost of Tsushima (the Director’s Cut version at that), Death Stranding, Control: Ultimate Edition, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

About 30 games from Ubisoft’s games-on-demand service, Ubisoft+, will also be available to subscribers of PS Plus Extra and Premium. The only relatively recent inclusion is Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which seemingly everyone under the sun has already played by now. The rest are for series that have had a new entry or two more recently—Watch Dogs, Steep, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4—or are smaller titles, like the excellent Child of Light.

Rounding out the list is a number of major PS4 games—basically a reiteration of the current “PS Plus Collection” available to current subscribers, beefed up by a handful of third-party hits. Highlights include Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Uncharted 4, Uncharted: Lost Legacy, Outer Wilds Cities: Skylines, Celeste, The Last of Us: Remastered, and Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Wait…why isn’t the PS5 version of Marvel’s Spider-Man included?

Beats me! (Sony did not respond to requests for comment.) The entire cross-gen treatment of Insomniac’s Spider-Man games has been a mess.

Weird. So, what’s the deal with classic games?

Players who sign up for the priciest tier also get downloadable access to a number of “classic” games from. It’s odd what Sony considers “classic.” Some totally make sense: Ape Escape, Jumping Flash, Dark Cloud. Others, like the BioShock remaster and, um, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning? Less sense.

More up in the air is the matter of digital ownership: When Sony initially announced PS Plus 2.0, some players were (rightfully) concerned that they may have to spend money to play games they’ve already purchased on older machines. If you’ve purchased digital versions of classics from the PS1 and PSP era, you needn’t subscribe to PS Plus to play them, Sony says. You can just pop onto the PlayStation Store and redownload as they become available. But, on the other hand, “some of the titles will also be available for individual purchase.” It’s unclear what games those are just yet, or if the process will roll out as smoothly as Sony says it will

What games can I stream?

If you’re signed up for PS Plus Premium, you can stream a bunch of PS3 games, including Infamous, Devil May Cry HD Collection, three Ratchet and Clank games, and Demon’s Souls (the original, not the remake). A lot of the more action-focused games require split-second button inputs. It’ll be interesting to see if and how latency hampers those games. Sony requires an internet connection speed of at least 5 mbps. As a point of comparison, for its cloud gaming, Microsoft does not require a minimum but recommends 20 mbps on consoles.

The PS Plus 2.0 dashboard on the PS5 shows various buttons for categories of games. — Here’s a look at the PS5 dashboard for the PS Plus revamp.

What game demos are available?

That highest tier also allows you to demo—get this—a grand total of six games for two hours a piece. Sony says the countdown only ticks down when you’re “in the game,” but it’s unclear if that includes time spent paused or in menus or what.

At launch, Farming Simulator 22, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Horizon Forbidden West, and WWE 2K22 are available on both PS4 and PS5. On PS5, you can get demos of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves (which essentially offers spruced-up versions of games already included in full as part of the games-on-demand library) and Cyberpunk 2077. Hmm, I wonder why the PS4 version of that one isn’t included…

Okay, when does this all go into effect?

Sony is rolling out PS Plus 2.0 piecemeal in various regions: Asia on May 24, Japan on June 2, North and South America on June 13, and Europe, Australia, and New Zealand on June 24. Here’s the full list of games:

Games Available With PS Plus Extra

Alienation | Housemarque, PS4
Ashen | Annapurna Interactive,PS4
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | Ubisoft, PS4/PS5
Batman: Arkham Knight | WB Games, PS4
Bloodborne | FromSoftware, PS4
Celeste | Maddy Makes Games, PS4
Cities: Skylines | Paradox Interactive, PS4
Concrete Genie | Pixelopus, PS4
Control: Ultimate Edition | 505 Games, PS4/PS5
Days Gone | Bend Studio, PS4
Dead Cells | Motion Twin, PS4
Dead Nation Apocalypse Edition | Housemarque, PS4
Death Stranding and Death Stranding Director’s Cut | Kojima Productions, PS4/PS5
Demon’s Souls | Bluepoint Games, PS5
Destruction AllStars | Lucid Games, PS5
Everybody’s Golf | Japan Studio, PS4
Far Cry 3 Remaster | Ubisoft, PS4
Far Cry 4 | Ubisoft, PS4
Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition | Square Enix Co. LTD, PS4
For Honor | Ubisoft, PS4
Ghost Of Tsushima Director’s Cut | Sucker Punch, PS4/ PS5
God of War | Santa Monica Studio, PS4
Gravity Rush 2 | Japan Studio, PS4
Gravity Rush Remastered | Japan Studio, PS4
Hollow Knight | Team Cherry, PS4
Horizon Zero Dawn | Guerrilla, PS4
Infamous First Light | Sucker Punch, PS4
Infamous Second Son | Sucker Punch, PS4
Knack | Japan Studio, PS4
LittleBigPlanet 3 | Sumo Digital, PS4
LocoRoco Remastered | Japan Studio, PS4
LocoRoco 2 Remastered | Japan Studio, PS4
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy | Square Enix Co. LTD., PS4/PS5
Marvel’s Spider-Man | Insomniac Games, PS4
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales | Insomniac Games, PS4/PS5
Matterfall |Housemarque, PS4
MediEvil | Other Ocean, PS4
Mortal Kombat 11 | WB Games, PS4/PS5
Narutoshippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 | Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., PS4
NBA 2K22 | 2K Games, PS4/PS5
Outer Wilds | Annapurna Interactive, PS4
Patapon Remastered | Japan Studio, PS4
Patapon 2 Remastered | Japan Studio, PS4
Red Dead Redemption 2 | Rockstar Games, PS4
Resident Evil | Capcom Co., Ltd, PS4
Resogun | Housemarque, PS4
Returnal | Housemarque, PS5
Shadow of the Colossus | Japan Studio, PS4
Soulcalibur VI | Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc., PS4
South Park: The Fractured but Whole | Ubisoft, PS4
Tearaway Unfolded |Media Molecule, PS4
The Artful Escape | Annapurna Interactive, PS4/PS5
The Crew 2 | Ubisoft, PS4
The Division | Ubisoft, PS4
The Last Guardian | Japan Studio, PS4
The Last of Us Remastered | Naughty Dog, PS4
The Last of Us: Left Behind | Naughty Dog, PS4
Until Dawn | Supermassive Games, PS4
Uncharted The Nathan Drake Collection |Naughty Dog, PS4
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End | Naughty Dog, PS4
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy | Naughty Dog, PS4
WipEout Omega Collection | Clever Beans & Creative Vault Studios, PS4