The New PS Plus Lineup Is Stacked, If You Can Make Sense Of It

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.

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.

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…