How Would You Improve Playstation Plus on the PS5?

[EricHiggin]

DonFerrari said:

EricHiggin said:

So if PS just adds stuff to the existing PS plus package and charges $75 or even $99, then people will just pay it since it's behind an even more expensive paywall and is the only option? If PS just put's PS5 behind a $599 paywall people will just pay it? Some will, many won't.

Which stuff? People decided to pay 60 only after MP was put behind the paywall. If enough thing those people think is valuable is added to it perhaps some would pay the 75 who knows. But what we know is that only 2M wanted to pay 60 for the "free games" and discount, but 37M accepted to pay it for MP.

So your 12M people paying 50 for the free games when 70M would already be paying 25 for MP doesn't make sense in the slightest.

I do really think your mid and top tier numbers are way off. Maybe I'm a little high on the base numbers but I think you're much too low on the other two. If you look at Pro, the higher tier console, in which approximately 50M PS4's have sold since it's launch, and that 1 in 5 of them are Pro models, then there should be around 10M Pro's in customers hands. If you had 50M base subs, there should be around 10M people willing to spend more. You seem to think only 3M total will buy into the higher tier packages. That's not even taking into account the individuals who make it clear they would've bought another even more expensive PS4 upgrade and who want constant expensive PS5 upgrades.

I have data that show it, you have hopes. 2M paid for PS+ because of games, 37M paid for MP. The MP for half the price wouldn't double the subs while at the same time getting 6x more subs for the games than before.

Let's assume I'm being too positive and you're being too negative. If we meet in the middle with our numbers, PS still makes more money at the end of the day and they aren't really doing much more work for it. They have more base subs in which they aren't providing free games or deals to them. Maybe some deals but nowhere near as incentivising as the deals you would get with the mid or top tier package. Mid tier stays the same for the most part, and top tier adds some things like PS Now, in which case already exists, just not as a package. PS also wouldn't necessarily be selling more stuff, just different stuff. Instead of the majority on the base package getting free games, some would be spending that money on other software or hardware.

Why should we assume something wrong just to make your point become true? There is nothing that suggest even middle ground would happen (I was already very generous putting 50M subs on the 25 subs, and more than generous with keeping similar subs of last gen on PS+ games and full PSNow subs on the premium package. A 5 per month payment would be more likely to get sales than 75 for a year because of the raw number.

How many people will spend the saved money on other PS products? What if they put those yearly savings towards something like a PSVR(2) eventually and it blows their mind so they spend even more money on games for it because of a cheaper Plus package? How many people live for online and would finally be persuaded to sell their existing platform to buy a PS4 or PS5 for the online savings over time, along with the other reasons they very well may have?

The 25 bucks saved after 20 years and they buy PSVR2, yes really good.

They didn't sold their X360 to buy PS3, that is probably the biggest reason Sony put a paywall for online and Nintendo as well. People that want free online go to PC and that don't seem to have affected sales of the consoles.

PS has plenty of reasons to compete if they feel it will help their business overall. They certainly don't want to stagnate if the don't have to, and they don't want to risk losing customers to the competition. Just look at XB1 vs PS4. Why if XB1 was $499, did PS4 launch at $399? Why wouldn't PS charge the same as the direct competition? XB1 also has lacked exclusives, so why has PS pushed so hard and put so much money and effort into pumping out so many major AAA high quality exclusives? Why does Game Pass have $1 sales when it has little competition in the segment that MS has carved out for it?

Because they wouldn't decide to make less money if not forced to.

So if online wasn't free on PS3 and you had to pay $25 for a basic package, how many would have paid that, and how many wouldn't have purchased a PS3 because of it? How many would have gone ahead and paid $60 anyway for the higher tier package while they were at it? Plus was also brand new product for PS. It's not often something brand new takes off immediately and see's no changes as it grows yet inevitably slowly stagnates. You need to charge more, or offer more choice, which typically means a cheaper choice at the very least.

You already pointed out it's one third of the existing user base. I simply didn't increase it because like I said, I wanted to be conservative. I don't see what's wrong with thinking way way more people will choose the cheaper base package over the higher tiers. That's what you've been saying. I'm just assuming a cheaper base package would push more people over the edge, who wouldn't be otherwise, to buy into Plus.

How many played PS3 online that weren't paying anything? How many would have paid $25 back then if they were forced to? How do you know it wouldn't double? If you look at many high selling games, after they've only sold a couple million copies give or take, the price has been getting cut in half and then it goes on to sell double or triple or more. Why couldn't this work for Plus?

We're basically assuming everything. Just because we have some general numbers to go off of doesn't guarantee anything. Did XB 360 numbers guarantee XB1 success? Did the changes to the XB1 ecosystem cause the problems it had? What about PS3 to PS4? Did the positive changes to PS4, like a lower, more reasonable, affordable price lead to it's success? Would cheaper online have made it even more successful?

Well you said people don't typically budget for gaming, so why couldn't they decide to take 3 or 4 years of online savings, plus non gaming related savings over that time period, and use them to purchase a PS product they may not have otherwise? If they only have a gaming budget, which you have to take into account will have money added to the pool each year, not just from the savings from online, it could be put into many different things. PSVR was just one possibility, considering it's going to get cheaper as time goes on.

The biggest reasons were that there was little reason at the time not to charge for online, or to charge less. With how poorly the PS3 gen went, charging the same price as XB Live made a tonne of sense at the time. It was becoming the norm, it helped to cover the crappy PS3 gen, PS4 was cheap enough that even with $50 going to online it was still $50 cheaper then the competition without paying for Live, and it helped tie or even lock to some degree many people into the PS4 ecosystem and PS brand in general.

Who was forcing PS to sell PS4 for $399? They could have sold it for the same price as XB1 and it still would have outsold it. Not nearly in the same manner as they did with the lower price, but regardless. PS could certainly have gotten away with less first party titles, maybe not lesser quality titles though. PS is doing this to bring more people into the ecosystem. They likely kept Plus at the same price as XB though because they assumed that was one of the things MS wasn't likely to budge on. That would make it even easier for PS to gain online market share now because Live is unlikely to follow a Plus reduced package as XB is headed in a more service based direction than PS.

If you want to bring people in who won't come easily for whatever reason, it means more work and options. If you don't bring them in, it means either charging more to your existing customers or stagnating. Both of these are more likely to keep those harder to get consumers away, while also losing some of your existing customers. There is a balance though.