Sony Announce PSN Plus

nofi 74 Comments

We’ve been talking about it for months, but Sony has finally confirmed an ‘upper’ level of PSN.

The official name is “PlayStation Plus”.  Plus will give users access to exclusive content, preferred earlier demos and free content ranging from themes to Minis.  Discounts, too.

There’s also automatic downloads, including update patches, as we’ve said before.

The price is $49.99 for a twelve month subscription, and the first month will feature two minis: Fieldrunners and Age of Zombies, the PSone game Rally Cross and the PSN super hit Wipeout HD.

Games will be available whilst your subscription exists.

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74 Comments

  1. The Norwegian Playstation Plus site also mentions Cross-game Voice Chat

    “invite your friends to chat online no matter what game you’re all playing, even if they aren’t members of PlayStation Plus”

    http://no.playstation.com/playstationplus/

    Required firmware: 3.40

    • I have a feeling the site was hacked…its the only thing in English on non-English sites…

    • The paragraphi is removed now, but I got a screenshot if anyone is interested :)

      Probably an early draft of the notes that got in untranslated, and for some reason the feature had to be pulled from firmware 3.40. My guess is that we’ll see it in 3.50(?)

  2. I loved the e3 show it was a great presentation from Sony. However PSN+ without any kind of continuous play is just not for me. A few avatars/themes and a few games I won’t play. So disappointed in what they’ve included

  3. i dont like the ‘as long as your sub’ … seems dodgy to me

    • Yeah, that’s put me off a bit also. :(

  4. Gah I already have Age of Zombies and Wipeout HD. Maybe next year!

  5. If they are gonna charge for a better service, are they gonna improve the servers, cause they are not great!

  6. The thing that interests me is the background downloading – set your PS3 to turn on at 3am every day to check for updates, download and install them.

    Interesting thing that no-one seems to have picked up on yet:-
    “Just set the time you want to receive updates and *DEMOS* and your PS3 will wake up and automatically download everything, ready for when you next want to play.”

    Demos?

    Does this mean you could set your PS3 to turn on roughly when the store updates each week, and all new demos will download to your PS3 while you are still at work? Or more likely, it will be the “early” PS+ demos.

    Still, I’m tempted to pay just to never have to sit and download a patch again*

    * of course, when you buy a new disc game that has been patched already, you’ll never avoid that first patch.

  7. So the premium avatars & dynamic themes, will these be a lot better than what we have right now and how many of these can we expect to see a month?

    I dont want to pay £40 if its just going to be the same as it is now, i mean since the end of last year to now, there has only been about 6 premium avatar packs released, and they havent exactly been from the best games, i want some MGS4, Resi 5, GTA4, MW2, FALLOUT 3, i want a pip boy as my avatar, so can i expect to see these if i buy this service, the same goes for the dynamic themes?

  8. Here’s what’s wrong with it so far:
    – Full game trial ON SELECTED TITLES, so it’s worthless until we know how many and which titles will support this.
    – Full game trial is one hour. Atleast give us an evening worth to decide on.
    – Background downloading of patches should have been free.
    – Atleast 200£ worth of stuff. Doesn’t mean anything if only 20£ of that is stuff I would have bought anyway. Show us what’s planned for the next few months so we have something to decide on.
    – I already have wipeout HD. How much of the content will be so old that I’ll already have bought it if I want it?

    Open questions:
    – Is the sub tied to an account or one (or a fixed number) single console?
    – Will I get access to old stuff I I subscribe later?
    – If not, will I get back access to old stuff if I let the subcription run out, and then resubscribe later?

    • They answered your open questions on the blog comments.
      – Sub is on your account but anything downloaded will have the same rights for other users as if you’d bought in outside your subscriptions.
      – Old stuff that was available to subscribers before you started subscribing? No.
      – Resubscribing after it runs out WILL give you access to the stuff you had access to before

      oh and as for telling is whattheu’re offering over the next few months, teu’re updating the PS+ site in the next week or so with that info…

  9. What happened to the saved game backups? That’s all i want.

    I’ve got all my saved games on my old housemates ps3, and need to move them onto my one. There is no way to copy multiple game saves, which is plain annoying, so being able to back them up online then download them at home would work.

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