This is why they should at least offer 2 PS Plus options, maybe more with PS Now built in. A Plus package with just access to online for around $25 per year, a Plus Premium package with free games, demo's, etc, for around $50 per year, and maybe a Plus Premium Now package for around $75 per year.

Some users will save and go with the cheaper option, but some will pay more and opt in for the all in one more expensive option. Overall the user base should grow bringing in even more money. This money should be spread across many sectors like hardware, software, online, next gen, etc.

While there are more than a few problems, I think the biggest issue is the lack of choice for online. 1 choice for $60 per year and that's it, and it's certainly not bare bones. If PS at least adds another option, or more, especially a much cheaper option, this should help. PS3 is the other problem.

Another question to ask is how much if any of the online price was baked into the PS3 hardware? I have to assume some cost was in there, and that online wasn't completely free, even if it was only a small portion of the msrp. While going from free online to paid probably seems ridiculous, you also got a much cheaper more affordable console right off the bat, but have to pay a fairly reasonable amount over the course of your online playtime on that console. Not to mention PS4's online is considerably better than PS3 in many ways. $600 was too much all at once, so it was spread out over years with PS4. PS was overly generous with PS3 because they screwed up and MS struck Live Gold, but they figured things out, regrouped, and presented a much more reasonable offering overall this time around with the PS4 ecosystem. It's not perfect though, as nothing ever is. Nothing in life is free unfortunately and everything get's paid back one way or another eventually.

Paying for online, even a lesser amount, would be worth it as long as the online system as well as overall ecosystem benefits from it, and could even lead to things like the end of mid gen consoles possibly. If PS can launch another PS3 esque console in terms of hardware and software improvement based on today's tech, for $399-$499, they should be able to go another 6 or more years before needing new hardware, like PS3. This of course would help devs and would mean even better things for games next gen.

I agree about making multiple PS+ tiers for different users. To me, using the Trophy system makes a lot of sense.

PS+ Bronze - Basic Free PSN Account

PS+ Silver - Online Gaming and Cloud Storage (10GB)

PS+ Gold - Online Gaming, Cloud Storage (100GB), Bundled Games, and Discounts

PS+ Platinum - Online Gaming, Cloud Storage (Unlimited), Bundled Games, Discounts, and PS Now

That's just a rough draft, but something along those lines would be easy to understand, while giving PS+ a wider reach, by offering people the ability to pay for what they want.

I don't like the idea of no mid gen upgrades. I really liked seeing the option for either a cheaper smaller console at the fab shrink, or an option that takes advanatage of the fab shrink to offer the most they can deliver. Ideally, for me, we would see PS5 upgrades at 5nm and 3nm next gen. I want the ability to buy the best PlayStation possible when the tech is ready. I never liked being locked out of fabrication improvements, upodated stadards (USB, Bluetooth, HDMI, WIfi, etc.) for years and years waiting until the next console arrives.

 Options is always the best choice, whether it be PS+ or Hardware. 

This is why they should at least offer 2 PS Plus options, maybe more with PS Now built in. A Plus package with just access to online for around $25 per year, a Plus Premium package with free games, demo's, etc, for around $50 per year, and maybe a Plus Premium Now package for around $75 per year.

Some users will save and go with the cheaper option, but some will pay more and opt in for the all in one more expensive option. Overall the user base should grow bringing in even more money. This money should be spread across many sectors like hardware, software, online, next gen, etc.

While there are more than a few problems, I think the biggest issue is the lack of choice for online. 1 choice for $60 per year and that's it, and it's certainly not bare bones. If PS at least adds another option, or more, especially a much cheaper option, this should help. PS3 is the other problem.

Another question to ask is how much if any of the online price was baked into the PS3 hardware? I have to assume some cost was in there, and that online wasn't completely free, even if it was only a small portion of the msrp. While going from free online to paid probably seems ridiculous, you also got a much cheaper more affordable console right off the bat, but have to pay a fairly reasonable amount over the course of your online playtime on that console. Not to mention PS4's online is considerably better than PS3 in many ways. $600 was too much all at once, so it was spread out over years with PS4. PS was overly generous with PS3 because they screwed up and MS struck Live Gold, but they figured things out, regrouped, and presented a much more reasonable offering overall this time around with the PS4 ecosystem. It's not perfect though, as nothing ever is. Nothing in life is free unfortunately and everything get's paid back one way or another eventually.

Paying for online, even a lesser amount, would be worth it as long as the online system as well as overall ecosystem benefits from it, and could even lead to things like the end of mid gen consoles possibly. If PS can launch another PS3 esque console in terms of hardware and software improvement based on today's tech, for $399-$499, they should be able to go another 6 or more years before needing new hardware, like PS3. This of course would help devs and would mean even better things for games next gen.

Sony won't do a 25 package for just online. That would mean very little people would buy the 50-60 for online and freebies.

Just look at the data. PS+ on PS3 got like less than 2M users with the 50 bucks for freebies and discounted games. PS+ on PS4 because of online got 40M subs.

If they separate the both, the one costing 25 would sell 50M and the one for 50 bucks would sell 1M, why would they do that?

Now if you want to see the options, PS+ 60 per year, PSNow 120 per year, both 150 per year that is more likely to happen.

Well what about hardware entry price? PS4 left a bunch of money in your pocket in comparison and has led to higher sales in a much shorter period than PS3. Look at the PS3 vs PS4 total game sales (shipments) time period and clearly the PS4 has allowed for more software sales. Plus no doubt helps with that as well.

With there being around 37M subscribers, who's to say that with a cheaper Plus package next gen that it wouldn't increase subs dramatically? If 37M are willing to pay $60 per month, then you could probably double that number if the cost was only $25, leading to 75M subs at $25. Then let's be safe and say 12M at $50 per month, and 5M at $75.

That would lead to an overall increase in sub revenue by $700M dollars. Then you have to ask yourself, for those that decided to save $25 by going with the cheapest package, how many of them are going to take that savings and put it towards more PS hardware or software anyway?

If PS5 launches at $499, you are now in between PS4 and PS3 in terms of launch entry price, so it wouldn't be crazy to think PS would lower the basic Plus package to around $25 to make it more appealing to those buyers. You're also going to have a cheaper PS4 on the market for those who likely have been waiting for the price to drop because they have no other choice, and if you want to have a chance at a significant amount of them joining Plus, the base price will have to be cheaper.

The way I see it, is one way or another, the money will end up in SNY's pocket and will probably increase overall by hooking more people with a cheaper base Plus price.

Except in real world it wouldn't really happen like that.

Yes people had more money around, but the incread of 1500% didn't come from more money in the pocket because PS4 was cheaper than PS3 (even more because at the time PS+ launched PS3 was about 249-299 anyway or close to it). The increase came almost exclusively by putting MP behind paywal.

So if you want to do a real math on it, you won't have your subs doubling on half the price, plus another 12M (1/3 of current PS+) paying today price and more 5M paying 75 (3x what PSNow have today). This would put a sum of 92M subs that is very much unlikely.

More likely outcome, 25 sub for MP on a similar size userbase (100M) would get you perhaps 50M subs, then 2M subs for 50 usd to get discounts and the free games and perhaps 1M on 75. Total = 25*50+50*2+75=1425M versus today 37M@50 = 1850M. So you have 400M less revenue but needing yo service twice the userbase so increased cost.

Basically no significant amount would pick that saved money and use on other PS stuff because they don't do accountability of money and videogame budget, and even if they did, Sony would have to sell more stuff to see the same dollar.

You are painting an impossible scenario to say it will profit more. And I was generous to put 50M subs with the 25 less payment. Sony would probably lose 500M a year with your strategy. With XBL having a similar price to PS+ there is no way or reason for Sony to start with such a low price.

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.

Probably around 30-50M would have paid 25 for MP if Sony put it behind a paywall, similar to how it would be today. People didn't stop purchasing X360 even with a double the price XBL for online so I don't see many not purchasing PS3 because of the half priced online. Probably same 1-2M would pay 50 for the PS+ with games, that is already historical data.

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.

Sure more people would chose the cheaper alternative on PS+, but that wouldn't make it double the sales of the cheaper and 6x the more expensive compared to PS3.

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?

Which game have you followed that released for half price for double sale? CoD have launched for similar prices whole gen and sales were naturally increasing, it wouldn't double because of price cut. Also most of the sales of the games happen on the first couple months, they don't double after the price cut (or triple). I'm yet to see you provide a single evidence to your assumptions.

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?

If you don't have any evidence better than historical data you go with historical data.

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.

Again if they saved money by paying less on PS+ and used that money to buy another PS product that would just mean Sony had to do more to get the same revenue (so more cost and less profit).

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.

X1 was 100 more than PS4 and that didn't made MS do XBL online free or anything of the sort.

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.

PS4 launching at 499 would probably sell much slower, sure it would still outsell X1 not sure the point in it. But just look at historical data and current gen data and instead of 100M PS4 would probably be 60-70M at this point.

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.

Here you are right, but offering MP by half price wouldn't improve profits as I put the numbers so no point in working more to get the same or less