Network subscription fees are a fact of life for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners that want to utilize online multiplayer functionality. While Xbox Live has been kicking around for over a decade, PlayStation’s mandatory premium offering is a fairly new service.
PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold both give away free games for their subscribers on a monthly basis, and some interesting analyses hit the web today by Push Square and Kotaku. The analyses essentially added up the entire dollar value of the games that are given away on the service, and scales are tipped largely to the side of PlayStation Plus.
The first analysis, done by Push Square, examined the dollar value of the PlayStation Plus 2014 offering. It totaled $1349.29 in games, across the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PS Vita consoles. The PlayStation Plus service costs $49.99 per year.
Following up on that analysis, Microsoft’s Games with Gold Program was looked at by Kotaku, and their calculations show a much, much lower dollar value for the subscribers. The grand total for Games with Gold was $584.67. Xbox Live Gold costs $60 per year.
Though there’s a serious discrepancy in terms of the total dollar value, the ratings of the games seem to be pretty much in-line when it comes to the average review score of the games on offer. PlayStation Plus games averaged a 79, where Games with Gold averaged 78.
While PlayStation Plus subscribers have been touting their service as superior over Games with Gold for some time, the numbers of the situation completely back up the boasting. According to the 2014 tallies, PlayStation Plus offers more, better games, for a lower price.
