Sony just announced a ton of new features currently under development. Features such as support for 1440p output have been teased for some time while others, such as the ability to join a Discord voice chat natively, feel like they should have been announced sooner than several years into the console’s life cycle.
You won’t be the first to access these features unless you’ve been selected for the beta, but they seem fairly promising. You’ll finally be able to make Discord calls directly from your PlayStation 5 and display the game that you’re playing to whoever you’re talking to (just like the mobile and desktop versions).
The PS5 will get other notable social features too. You’ll finally be able to request screenshare directly from your friends’ profiles, join gaming sessions through “Party” chats, and see which games that your friends also own on their account. If you’re picky about who gets to join your games (like me), don’t fret: Sony is giving PS5 owners the ability to dictate who does and doesn’t get to join your games.
These additions are potentially huge boons to the multiplayer ecosystem that Sony has been trying to build out ever since it acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion. And according to a financial call from last year, multiplayer was the biggest reason that PlayStation Plus users kept paying to use Sony’s gaming subscription service every month.
Even if you’re not big on multiplayer, Sony is developing features that are applicable to all PlayStation owners. The one I’m most excited about is the ability to use a voice command to capture video. You wouldn’t fiddle with details manually either; you can make presets for how long an average clip should be.
If you upgraded to a current-gen console recently, you probably remember game save transfers being a huge pain point. Currently, the only way to shuffle your PlayStation 4 saves to your new console was to dig into your cloud storage. PlayStation Plus subscribers will eventually be able to transfer save data automatically. Even if you’re not paying for Sony’s gaming subscription service, you’ll soon be able to transfer data between individual PS5s. You know, now that it’s supposedly possible for the average person to secure more than one console.
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If you’re lucky enough to receive a beta sign-up email, then you can preview these features before anyone else. So check your inbox carefully.
Sucker Punch hasn’t announced what it’s working on, but has confirmed what it isn’t working on.Image: Sucker Punch Productions
Sony’s San Diego Studio is a multiplatform studio now that MLB The Show is available on Xbox and Nintendo platforms. So while it won’t be a PlayStation exclusive, expect an MLB The Show 23 later this year. God of War Ragnarök was one of the biggest games of last year, and was also one of the last big games in 2022, having only launched about two months ago. Sony Santa Monica also doesn’t seem to have plans to make DLC for Ragnarök, so it’s probable the team goes mostly silent in 2023.
Sucker Punch could be a wildcard in 2023, as it’s been about three years since Ghost of Tsushima, but the studio also seems to be working on a sequel to its open-world samurai game rather than a new IP or a sequel to its previous series Infamous and Sly Cooper. The gap between Infamous: Second Son and Ghost of Tsushima was about six years, but if the studio is iterating on old systems, we may hear about the new samurai sequel sooner rather than later. Finally, Valkyrie Entertainment was a more low-key acquisition for Sony, and the team has acted primarily as a support studio as recently as God of War Ragnarök. That being so, the team is likely helping out with other projects that launch in 2023.
Whew, I think that’s everything on the PlayStation radar so far. Has anything got your interest piqued, or are you hoping Sony will announce some more enticing projects in the coming year?
If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you’re in for a pretty sweet time starting on January 17. And if you’re not, the first catalog update for 2023 is tough to say no to. The latest injection of games to Sony’s subscription service features some undead co-op slaying, Super Saiyan shenanigans, a couple of classic games, and much more.
The PlayStation Plus subscription service, much like other gaming subs, regularly updates with new games every month. The service is spread across three tiers, Essential, Extra, Premium, which each cost $10, $15, and $18 a month respectively. Premium gets you the largest catalog (it’s the only tier that nets you access to PSX games) as well as letting you take advantage of Sony’s game streaming service (once known as PS Now). This month’s highlights include Back 4 Blood, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Devil May Cry 5, Just Cause 4, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, and Syphon Filter 3, among others.
In a blog update, Sony laid out the following additions to PS Plus Extra and Premium tiers:
PS Plus Extra and Premium PS4 games
Back 4 Blood Dragon Ball FighterZ Jett: The Far Shore Just Cause 4: Reloaded Life Is Strange: Before the Storm Life Is Strange Sayonara Wild Hearts Omno Erica
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Up to $100 credit
Samsung Reserve
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
PS Plus Extra and Premium PS5 games
Back 4 Blood Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition Jett: The Far Shore Just Cause 4: Reloaded
If you’re on the Premium tier, you’ll also get the following PlayStation One classics:
Syphon Filter 3 Star Wars Demolition Hot Shots Golf 2
If you haven’t played Devil May Cry 5 yet and you like stylish hack-and-slash action, it should probably be your first download of the lot. Otherwise, I definitely recommend giving Syphon Filter 3 a spin. The stealthy action series never reached critical acclaim quite like Metal Gear Solid did, but it’s definitely a pleasant trip down PlayStation memory lane. Let’s not resurrect the Snake vs. Gabe wars in the comments though, please. (Obviously Snake wins.)
After two years on the market, you’d probably think scooping up a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X would be simpler by now.
Sure, there’s the semiconductor shortage the world is still contending with and a supply-chain bottleneck that’s expected to last until 2023 (if not 2024 according to some estimates). But, as Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan said at the annual PlayStation Partner Awards ceremony in Japan on December 2, the company has apparently “resolved the long-term supply issue of the PlayStation 5” in Asian markets.
Oh yeah? Then why, when Kotaku called several brick-and-mortar stores just a few days before Christmas this year were we told inventory for both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles was either very limited or completely gone?
The truth of the matter is, while it has become somewhat easier to get your hands on new-gen consoles, doing so still requires diligence and patience—unless you want the smaller, cuter Series S, or can wait for shipping. Otherwise, much like last year, if you were hoping to walk in and out of a store with a brand-spanking-new console in hand, you’re likely out of luck.
Inventory In Brick-And-Mortar Stores Is Unreliable
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You might be tempted to call up your local physical retailer like Best Buy or GameStop with the goal of buying a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X in the store. That’s certainly a possibility, though it depends on the console you’re going for.
A GameStop associate at a Manhattan, New York location told Kotaku over the phone that Sony’s system is “rarely” in stock and when it is on the store shelves, it’s gone within the week. The Xbox Series X is “a little more common,” the associate said, but the same inventory issue arises: When it is available, it’s sold out in just a few days’ time. This situation is repeated at other physical stores, including Best Buy and Walmart, with store associates at both retailers telling Kotaku in brief phone interviews that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are “occasionally” in stock but quickly sell out.
Surprisingly, things are a little different at Target. An employee at a Manhattan store said that the PlayStation 5 was actually sitting on the shelves “right now,” but folks looking to buy one couldn’t just walk in, take one to the counter, and check out. Instead, you have to do an in-store pick-up through the company’s website and, if inventory was available, then you could walk in with money and walk out with a PlayStation 5. In an eye-popping twist, the Xbox Series X was immediately available. The employee said, if I really wanted to, I could go buy Microsoft’s console this instant. They were quick to point out, though, that all system purchases—especially on the PlayStation 5—were limited to one per person due to “security concerns.” Yikes.
Online Retailers Are A Bit Better, But Not By Much
If brick-and-mortar stores are unreliable in terms of physical inventory, you may have a better chance at buying a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X online and shipping it to your home. All the major retailers typically have both consoles in stock and if they aren’t available by themselves, you can usually get it bundled with a game or subscription. There are some exceptions here, of course. GameStop, for example, is completely sold out of individualPlayStation 5s and Xbox Series Xs online right now. As is Best Buy on the PlayStation 5, though you can order the Xbox Series X if you have an account.
It’s always finicky ordering something from Walmart, as the company tends to partner with third-party sellers to complete transactions. But, as I’m checking the company’s website right now, PlayStation 5s and Xbox Series Xs are mostly available to purchase online—though the prices for these consoles seem to vary wildly. Target is similarly strange, withbothsystems either being “discontinued for shipping” or relegated to in-store pick-up only—if they are even available at all, of course. One quick note here, though: You could also order the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X directly from Sony and Microsoft’s official websites, and they appear to be in stock. Shipping here seems to be comparable to other major retailers as well, with orders placed now arriving just a few days after Christmas. Not bad.
Hey, You Could Always Just Get An Xbox Series S
It’s just so cute, even when zoomed in.Image: Microsoft
You may have noticed I skipped one whole console: the Xbox Series S. That’s because, as I wrote earlier, Microsoft’s cheaper, smaller system is almost always available. Several associates across the brick-and-mortar stores told Kotaku over the phone that they had “plenty” of Xbox Series S’s sitting on their shelves at the moment. And while I was browsing around multiple online retailers, including Microsoft’s own website, the slimmer sister to the behemoth shoebox Xbox Series X was ready to be ordered.
Sure, it’s not the monster powerhouse that is the Xbox Series X. It can’t output native “true 4K” and only has four teraflops of processing power when compared to the bigger sister’s 12. And yeah, you do only get 512 GB of internal storage instead of 1 TB. But what the system lacks in power is made up by its impressive form factor and accessible price point. If you’re willing to make those minor trade-offs, then the Xbox Series S is an excellent way to get into this current generation of console gaming.
Another year is in the books, y’all. We made it through. The entertainment and technology industries are still getting battered by both the ongoing pandemic and semiconductor shortages, but it does appear that things are smoothing over a little. Maybe this time next year, the forecast of getting a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will be significantly better. At the very least, we don’t have to worry much about bots anymore.
If you own a PlayStation 4 or 5, you can view your yearly Wrap-Up starting from today. The PlayStation equivalent of Spotify Wrapped and other year-end summaries of user activity on a platform, the Wrap-Up lets Sony once again shame you for your gaming choices as it’s done in prior years. Simply go to this link and log into your PlayStation account.
That’s right. The corporation that owns your console data knows that you only played three hours of Horizon Forbidden West before losing yourself in Elden Ring. You can check stats such as the individual number of hours played on each game, the percentage of that as a part of your total playtime, earned trophies, and the number of PS Plus games that you downloaded (if you’re one of the 45 million subscribers to Sony’s premium gaming service). The last one feels oddly specific. I guess in the midst of declining membership numbers, Sony needed some way of trying to remind you that PS Plus is actually worth it.
Of course, this comes with some caveats. You need to have played games on your console for at least 10 hours, and you need to have consented to giving Sony your data. I don’t remember ever doing something like that, so it was probably just on by default. Haha, that was so sneaky and totally ethical of them. At least I get to see how much I really got out of my console. (The answer: Not much—I’m mostly gaming on my PC or my Switch.)
If you’ve ever played any PlayStation exclusives, you’ll also be able to view community-wide stats, such as the number of Thunderjaws slaughtered in Horizon Forbidden West, or the miles driven in Gran Turismo 7, or the axes thrown in God of War Ragnarök.
You’ll be able to view your stats until January 13, and the Wrap-Up will continuously update until the end of the year.
The opening moments of Steelrising felt surprisingly doable and fun for a soulslike, a genre of game that often starts out with tough challenges and a “go figure it out” kinda vibe. But once I hit the second map, I encountered an enemy that made me reach for the game’s “Assist Mode.” You might think that flipping on an “Easy Mode” let me breeze through the rest of the game, mindlessly. But it didn’t. Far from it. The game remains hard, but there was room to learn with more patient pacing. With this mode turned on, the game isn’t constantly sending me back to a spawn area, drained of my experience points with time lost to loading screens. The mode offers variable difficulty options, so I can scale up to where the game wants me to be. Steelrising isn’t dethroning the masters of this genre. But it sure as hell is showing at least one way they can improve, and with a pretty cool aesthetic at that.
Steelrising is the latest title from French developer Spiders. It’s a soulslike where you play as Aegis, a clockwork “automat” who must do battle with other similar creations in a steampunky alternative history twist on the French revolution. The studio is known for narrative-focused RPGs such as 2016’s The Technomancer and 2019’s Greedfall.
Spiders’ previous games, while perhaps being generally similar to something like a Mass Effect, usually march to the beat of their own drum. With Steelrising, I initially wasn’t thrilled about seeing the studio chase the model of another game so closely, only to predictably fall shy of the incredibly strong standard FromSoftware has set in this genre over the years.
If you are a diehard Miayazaki fan who doesn’t have time for imitators, Steelrising isn’t likely to grab your attention. Despite an imaginative premise and some great character design with digestible RPG mechanics, there’s just something missing here. It also struggled to maintain 60 frames-per-second on PC for me, which made the experience feel rougher than it should. Yet, all the boxes have been checked: enemies are tough, you need to level up to meet their health and attack power, when you die you drop your XP, and return back to the last spawn point with all of the enemies having been refreshed, tasked with recovering your don’t-call-’em-souls. You’ll continue to unlock new shortcuts and ways of traversing the winding maps as you move forward. Ya get the picture.
But the “Assist Mode” is where it is worthy of note and conversation.
Gif: Spiders / Nacon / Kotaku
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This mode is a set of options that lets you change a variety of the game’s functions. You can modulate the damage you take, scaling it down to 0% if you desire (you’ll still take fall damage though). You can also choose to keep your XP when you die, adjust your stamina regeneration rate, and affect the “cooling” timer you’ll get when you perform too many actions in a row. If any soulslike is to consider adding difficulty options, Steelrising is a clear model of how to do this.
Those who bristle at the notion of easing the difficulty of a soulslike are likely worried that the core experience risks being diluted or lost, or simply misses the point of the genre. Many might worry that it’s the virtual equivalent of removing guns from a shooter or jumping from a platformer. But Steelrising’s Assist Mode doesn’t pull you away from the core gameplay. Rather, it lets you get a different perspective on it so you can actually get better at the core skills of attacking and dodging and potentially learn how leveling up can change those dynamics.
The option I found the most use of was to reduce the damage to 0%. This meant that the first enemy that truly gave me some troubles, an automat that flings giant steel balls around on chains connected to its arms, could teach me its movesets instead of just beat the shit out of me and forcing me to restart every time I failed. It went from being a giant asshole to a sparring partner.
It still knocked me on my ass every single time. But I could get up and say “okay, when it moves like this, I’ve got to get out of the way.” I learned where the openings were, how quick I should be in pressing my attack. I was able to bake a muscle memory into my response to this kind of enemy, and I didn’t have to go allllll the wayyy back to the damn spawn point and face allll the daaaamn enemiess agaaaaain to learn that. I would love there to be a “fake health bar” so I could get a sense of how much damage they do to know “well, I would’ve died at this point.” Assist Mode helped me understand the language of the game, and has prepared me for when I’m ready to take those training wheels off, take down these foes, and feel accomplished in how I’ve gotten better.
Screenshot: Spiders / Nacon / Kotaku
The other difficulty options can also adjust what kind of game this is. Having XP stay with you means death plays a different role in the game. Stamina regeneration can make the game feel a bit quicker. Granted, when you turn on any of these features, there are certain achievements you can’t unlock. But that’s fine! In fact, it really does preserve the crushing difficulty the devs were aiming for. It makes playing the game the way it was designed as something you could aspire to, not be punished so often for failing to meet its demands.
I enjoy challenges and difficult experiences in video games and elsewhere. I like to see my own improvement in the things I find interest in. But soulslikes have, far too often, been too punishing of a teacher for me. And as someone who struggles with my mental health and has to fight off enough real demons when something is frustrating, soulslikes have remained something that feels too unkind to me. I’m just less likely to engage with them. I want to experience the thrill of beating these games, the accomplishment of having mastered something. I just need to prioritize my personal cooldown timer for things in life that will never have a difficulty slider. Steelrising proves that a game can do this while still being quite hard.
“Assist Mode” didn’t simply make the game easier. It was a helping hand that reframed the frenetic action to say, “hey, you can actually do this. And here’s how.” Games need more of this.
At this rate, we’ll never see the last of The Last of Us. Ahead of a high-profile HBO adaptation, Naughty Dog released a top-to-bottom remake, called The Last of Us Part I, for PlayStation 5.
Make no mistake: The Last of Us Part I is fundamentally the same exact game as its 2013 original (and subsequent 2014 remaster, for PlayStation 4). In my testing, guides that already exist for the original apply here—right down to the combinations for safes and other locked doors. If you’re seeking hyper-specific advice, you’re better off checking out Kirk’s initial tips from [website crumbles into dust].
Still, Part I is the most mechanically superior version of the game, no question about it, and with the enhancements come some changes. Like its immediate predecessor, 2020’s The Last of Us Part II on PlayStation 4, Naughty Dog included an impressive array of settings and accessibility options. You’ll find well over 60 sliders and settings you can tweak. Most are dependent on preference, the sort of thing you’ll want to adjust as you play, but there are a handful that are worth turning on from the jump.
Vibrating Speech
Speech to vibrations, found under the DualSense menu, is one of the few parts of The Last of Us Part I that makes it feel like a legitimate PS5 game (rather than an extremely pretty PS4 one). The setting makes the PS5 controller vibrate when a character is talking, and it does so at the same cadence as their speech. It’s pretty cool! It’s also a little intense by default. For me, I’ve found the speech to vibrations intensity sweet spot at 5—just enough to “hear” characters talk but not so much that it’s distracting.
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Up to 90% off
Humble Bundle’s Summer Sale
Game and Save Great news for PC gamers out there looking to save money and add more games to your backlog which you’ll eventually get to. Humble Bundle has kicked off its Summer Sale in which you can save up to 90% on games.
Screenshot: Naughty Dog / Kotaku
Custom difficulty
The Last of Us Part I is playable on six difficulty settings, ranging: very light, light, moderate, hard, survivor, and, once you beat the game, grounded. But the challenge isn’t so linear. You can adjust the difficulty for five different aspects of the game:
Player: Dictates how much damage you take from attacks, and how frequently or infrequently you clock checkpoints in the middle of a fight.
Enemies: Basically dictates how savvy (or not-savvy) your foes are.
Allies: Determines how often your allies assist you in combat.
Stealth: Controls a number of variables related to sneaking, including how long it takes for enemies to alert their comrades after spotting you.
Resources: Regulates how often resources, like food, ammo, and crafting supplies, appear.
So if you’re great at staying out of sight but struggle with the all-out action segments, you can reflect that in a custom difficulty setting. There’s also a perk here for masochists. Though you can’t start a new game from the highest possible difficulty level—even if you’ve played it a thousand times during its prior iterations—you can manually set all five of those to grounded for a de facto hardest-possible run.
Photo Mode Shortcut
The Last of Us Part I is debatably one of the prettiest games on console right now. In other words: You’re gonna wanna take a lot of screenshots. Typically, popping into photo mode requires opening the menu, which slows down the pace of the game—unless you turn on photo mode shortcut, in the controls menu. When activated, you can hop right into photo mode by pressing both thumbsticks in at the same time. Just make sure to get the timing right, else you’ll turn on Joel’s flashlight and ruin your shot!
Hints
Hints, at the very bottom of the HUD menu, are set to sometimes by default. But they’re far more cumbersome than they are helpful. For one thing, they only offer advice as to the critical path. Sometimes you know exactly what to do to proceed in the story but, because it’s a Naughty Dog game (dense levels worth exploring), you want to poke around for a bit, see if you can turn up any collectibles or key resources. And that brings me to the most annoying part of Part I’s hints: Once a tip pops up, it doesn’t go away until you finish the task it tells you to do. Here’s where I remind you that all of the already-written guides for this game are just as effective now as they were a decade ago.
Screenshot: Naughty Dog
Bow Reticle Style
For the most part, yes, The Last of Us Part I is the same game as The Last of Us. One subtle change: There’s a new aiming system for the bow. And it kinda sucks. By default, it comes with just a standard dot as a reticle—not great for gauging distances when aiming with a bow. But if you change the bow reticle style setting, found under the HUD menu, to classic, you’ll be able to see the arrow’s path as intended: with a clear trajectory showing where it’ll land. Not only is this helpful AF, it’s also a reminder that, yeah, some things are better left untouched.
A consumer rights advocacy group is suing Sony for charging a 30 percent commission fee on all digital purchases made through the UK PlayStation Store. This is functionally a class action lawsuit that seeks to distribute billions of dollars to players who have used the PlayStation UK store since August 2016.
According to Sky News, the lawsuit was filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal on August 19. “Sony dominates the digital distribution of PlayStation games and in-game content,” said one of the lawyers leading the lawsuit. “It has deployed an anti-competitive strategy which has resulted in excessive prices to customers that are out of all proportion to the costs of Sony providing its services.” Kotaku reached out to Sony for a comment, but did not obtain one by the time of publication.
The argument here is that Sony has a “near-monopoly” on the sale of digital games, particularly PlayStation games, and so it shouldn’t be using that power to enforce unreasonable prices on consumers. Sony is not the only platform that enforces a 30 percent take (most major storefronts do, with the notable exception of the Epic Games Store). We’ll have to wait and see whether or not the courts uphold that the PlayStation ecosystem is a monopoly, and whether or not that will have an impact on other walled gardens like app stores or Steam. Kotaku reached out to the legal team about what it considers to be a reasonable commission fee, but did not get a comment by the time of publication.
The plaintiffs point out that gaming is the biggest entertainment industry in the UK, and Sony is hurting consumers who can’t afford their games. “We’re in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the consumer purse is being squeezed like never before,” said Alex Neill, a consumer rights advocate who filed the lawsuit. While I’m sympathetic to how inflation makes it difficult for players to afford more games, I’m not sure if I would lump gaming together with a cost of living crisis. Paying rent is a necessity. Playing God of War Ragnarök on launch is not.
The last major lawsuit against the 30 percent commission was filed by Epic Games against Apple. Apple had removed Fortnite from its App Store after its publisher had tried to implement its own payment method, circumventing the store’s ability to collect 30 percent on the game’s microtransactions. The court ruled that Apple could not force microtransactions to go through the App Store, but it also stated that Apple was not in violation of antitrust law.
But this lawsuit took place in an American court. Perhaps the lawsuit against Sony will fare better in the British legal system.
Two months ago, Sony reimagined PS Plus, its longtime membership program for PlayStation owners. Now, it looks a whole lot like Microsoft’s Game Pass: For roughly the same amount of money, both offer access to a Netflix-style games-on-demand library. Obviously, we had to stack the two services up against each other.
Price
Game Pass is available as a subscription for console, PC, or both. The two separated tiers cost $10 a month. Xbox Live Ultimate, which joins the two and provides access to the EA Play Library (a similar games-on-demand service) and Xbox Live Gold, costs $15 a month. There is no way to pay for multiple months or a year up front at a tiered markdown (at least officially).
PS Plus is also available for a subscription, but it gets very complicated very fast. There are two new tiers. The Extra is $15 a month, or $100 for the year, and offers free monthly games, online play, and a catalog of on-demand games including some of Ubisoft’s library. Premium is $18 a month, or $120 a year, and adds access to classic games, game trials, and cloud streaming for most of the games in the library. That’s a huge price difference, and while PS Plus Premium is more expensive month-to-month, it’s actually almost 50 percent cheaper if you commit to the whole year.
Winner: PS Plus
Streaming
Game Pass allows for cloud-streaming, provided you pay for the pricier Ultimate tier. The streaming functionality is technically still “in beta,” but it is for all intents and purposes up and running. Microsoft recommends internet speeds of at least 10mbps for mobile devices and 20mbps for consoles and PCs. Based on Kotaku’s testing, it’s…fine? Despite cloud gaming’s huge advancements recently, streaming still can’t compete with downloaded games. The latency, however minor, is unignorable. As such, cloud gaming is best used for puzzlers, chill RPGs, light platformers, and other games that don’t demand split-second reflexes.
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Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse
Gaming! Uses exclusive ultra-fast wireless tech to make sure your mouse is faster than you are, can be sued alongside special software for highly-customizable performance, and has 11 buttons to mess around with, a hyper-fast scroll wheel, and RGB lighting too.
Microsoft says “more than 100” games are currently streamable via cloud gaming on Xbox Game Pass, but more games are added every few weeks. Right now, the Game Pass library currently lists 381 games as capable of streaming.
Stray.Screenshot: Annapurna / Kotaku
To unlock streaming on PS Plus you need to buy the $18 a month tier. And even then, the streaming quality is nothing to write home about. At best, it’s as good as Xbox Cloud Gaming. Sometimes it’s worse. Roughly 320 games from the Premium library can be streamed on console or PC, and a good chunk of those are PS3 games and classics rather than the full PlayStation 4 library. For example, Marvel’s Avengers and Stray are available on console but not in the streaming library.
Most notably, you can’t stream PS Plus games to your phone. For now, the service relies on Remote Play, meaning you need a console to play on mobile and you must be on the same WiFi network.
Winner: Game Pass
Game Library
Of course, a games-on-demand service is only as good as the one thing it’s supposed to provide: games.
Right now, the Xbox Game Pass library has about 475 games, but that tally comprises the library across both tiers, including the 92 games currently part of EA Play. The main draw, of course, is that Microsoft puts its entire first-party portfolio on the platform. That also includes the major tent poles—like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5, alongside forthcoming blockbusters like Starfield and Redfall—which become available the day they came out. Third-party games tend to stick around for a year at most, though some, like Rockstar’s open-world Hold ‘Em simulator Red Dead Redemption 2, become unavailable after a matter of months. It’s unpredictable.
Halo Infinite.Screenshot: 343 Industries
The library also regularly cycles in third-party games and often serves as a launch pad for indie gems. This year alone, the twee Zelda-like Tunic, the snowboarding sim Shredders, and the puzzler-cum-dungeon-crawler Loot River all launched on Game Pass. (Here’s Kotaku’s list of the best under-the-radar games currently available.) Developers have acknowledged to Kotaku that debuting on Game Pass cuts into initial sales but is ultimately worth it for the tradeoff in publicity.
PS Plus Extra currently includes around 430 PS4 and PS5 games, while Premium adds another 395 from PS1, PS2, PS3 (streaming only), and PSP. While the classics are a nice bonus, the biggest draw by far are the PlayStation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Bloodborne. Unlike Microsoft, Sony has committed to not putting its newest releases on the service day-and-date, and if Returnal arriving a year after release is any indication, it seems like a good bet that players will have to wait at least a year to 18 months before newer stuff appears.
There are plenty of strong contenders in the third-party department though. Games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, Prey, Control, Doom, and Tetris Effect are all present, as are indies like Celeste, Outer Wilds, Dead Cells, and Virginia. The library has plenty of diversity and was bolstered most recently from the same-day addition of Stray, which is already a 2022 GOTY contender. The Ubisoft component, led by Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is also a strong compliment. At the same time, Sony hasn’t yet demonstrated it is, or will be, as aggressive as Microsoft in courting a steady stream of third party day-and-date additions. There’s also no PC-exclusive portion of the library.
Winner: PS Plus
Ari: Going into this exercise, I totally imagined it’d paint a clear picture of Game Pass superiority, but these two services seem fundamentally identical to me—right down to the UI—with Sony’s new version of PS Plus marginally better in the few aspects that matter. The prices are mostly the same, but the option to pay for a year of PS Plus at a “discount” edges out Game Pass in that regard. Sure, Game Pass’ big draw is that it puts Microsoft’s first-party games on the service at launch, but…Microsoft barely has any first-party games out this year! Right now, that perk seems like little more than a marketing line.
Ethan: I also thought Game Pass would be the clear winner coming out of this, but now I’m conflicted as well. Not everyone can afford to pay for a full year up front, but it really changes the calculus in this matchup. There are some other key differences as well, and while I don’t think they make one a clear winner over the other, I do think it makes it easier to decide which you want to pay for. Want immediate access to a meaty back catalog of some of the biggest and best games from the last generation? PS Plus wins. Want to stay current on some of the best new games coming out every month and play them at any time on your phone? Then it’s Game Pass all the way.
As the prophecies (aka, Sony’s vast marketing machine) foretold, Ragnarök is coming. Yesterday, Sony’s Santa Monica Studio announced a November release date for its upcoming action game God of War Ragnarök. Maybe you’ve found yourself itching to replay its predecessor, God of War. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing so and lemme tell you: New game plus does not do it for me.
A few months after God of War’s initial 2018 release, Sony added a new game plus mode to the game. Like most similar modes, you can start a fresh save file with all of the skills and gear you earned over your prior playthrough. Enemies are scaled up in difficulty to match your abilities. From the perspective of pure power fantasy, it’s a blast and, to a certain extent, God of War’s new game plus makes replaying it feel like playing through a totally new game.
It also doesn’t make a lick of narrative sense.
Yes, yes, say what you will about “ludon********* dis*******” or “playing games inherently demands a suspension of disbelief” or whatever. I’m not new here, and at the risk of opening a whoooole other can of worms, I generally agree. But God of War is an exception.
Spoilers for God of War (2018).
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God of War cold opens with longtime protagonist Kratos swinging an ax into a tree. He’s living sequestered in the woods. He’s rocking a ZZ Top beard. He has a son, a precocious, kind-hearted kid named Atreus. Most notably, the Blades of Chaos, Kratos’ signature weapons from the original trilogy, are nowhere to be seen. Clearly, a lot of time has passed.
The crux of God of War’s story revolves around Kratos and Atreus delivering the ashes of Faye—spouse to Kratos, parent to Atreus—to the highest peak in all the realms. It’s not long until Atreus comes down with an urgent, life-threatening sickness, the cure for which is located in the land of the dead, Helheim. (Though the original trilogy was inspired by Greek mythology, the 2018 entry pivoted to Norse canon.) Kratos’ ax is useless against Helheim’s cannon fodder; he’ll need a different weapon.
The scene is a tour de force. It’s worth watching in its entirety:
Sony / RabidRetrospectGames
Good stuff, right? But here’s the red flag: When you start a new game plus in God of War, you start with the Blades of Chaos already unlocked. Kratos is literally wearing them in the very first scene (along with whatever armor you had equipped at the end of your first playthrough).
That’s not a “spoiler,” per se, nor does it ruin any plot twists; if you’ve played the game, you know Kratos digs up the Blades of Chaos. But it totally defangs the game’s most emotionally impactful moment. It’s also just…weird.
Following the news, first reported by Bloomberg last month, that God of War Ragnarök would likely come out in the fall, I decided to replay its predecessor. I initially started with new game plus. Having the Blades of Chaos from the very start just didn’t feel right. And since God of War forces you to commit to a game mode from the start of a save file (in other words, you can’t move from new game plus to new game minus), I had to make a choice. I knew the Blades of Chaos would bother me. I couldn’t continue.
It’s not like playing on the vanilla mode is a pain in the ass, at least personally. God of War is, after all, hailed as one of the best games ever, and deservedly so. It’s reached a level of acclaim that’s only clarified with time. Four years later—with my understanding of combat and knowledge of puzzle solutions covered in a thin layer of mental dust—replaying God of War almost feels like playing a totally new game, even without the new game plus.