Sony has long provided a free online environment for PlayStation players. Most recently though, the company ventured into the world of subscriptions by offering PlayStation users the PlayStation Plus service. 2012 was the biggest year for the service, as once Sony began rolling out the Instant Game Collection, fans began to take notice of the substantial value that it provides.
For PlayStation Plus subscribers, access to free games comes on a monthly basis, and these are kept on your console or handheld for as long as you subscribe to the service. But does Sony have even bigger plans with their next-gen console? According to Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida their recent partnership with Gaikai could play a huge role in realizing the dream of an even broader subscription based games delivery service.
Speaking with the Guardian, Yoshida explains some of the possibilities for a multi-tiered subscription based service.
‘One subscription for thousands of games – that’s our dream’
“So hypothetically we can look at different models…We could have gold, silver, or platinum levels of membership, something like that. We can do subscription services when we have more content – especially now that we have the Gaikai technology available. With one subscription you have access to thousands of games – that’s our dream.”
Yoshida’s comments make it sound like Sony may be readying a bigger version of PlayStation Plus for their next-gen console. Was the service in its current incarnation just a test run for bigger things to come? Obviously Yoshida’s comments have a lot of qualifying statements in them. We “could” do this, and we “can” do that, but it definitely appears to be a possibility.
Published: Feb 26, 2013 05:00 am