Ended up getting PS+ Extra for one month.

Will definitely play through Stray and Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm thinking of starting GoT + SpiderMan but I feel like saving these experiences for a first time play through on the PS5. I don't think I'll subscribe past one month either, so I wouldn't be able to platinum these massive open world games, yet alone enjoy them if I had to rush through them.

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/07/14/introducing-playstation-stars-an-all-new-loyalty-program/


Introducing PlayStation Stars – An all new loyalty program

Join for free, complete campaigns, and earn rewards.

Grace Chen
Vice President, Network Advertising, Loyalty & Licensed Merchandise

Throughout our company’s 27-year history, we have been continually moved by how meaningful gaming experiences can create fond, lifelong memories for players. All of us at PlayStation take special joy in creating unique products and experiences that delight our fans. This includes everything from our consoles and critically acclaimed games, to community challenges such as Seize the Throne and Treat Codes, to digital and live events including State of Play.

Today, I’m pleased to reveal PlayStation Stars, a brand new loyalty program that celebrates you, the player, for being on this ever growing gaming journey with us. PlayStation Stars will be free to join when it launches later this year. Once you become a member, you’ll earn rewards by completing a variety of campaigns and activities. Our “Monthly Check-In” campaign simply requires you to play any game to receive a reward, while other campaigns require you to win tournaments, earn specific trophies, or even be the first player to platinum a blockbuster title in your local time zone.

All PlayStation Stars members will have opportunities to earn loyalty points. Points can be redeemed in a catalog that may include PSN wallet funds and select PlayStation Store products. As an additional benefit, PlayStation Plus members enrolled in PlayStation Stars automatically earn points for purchases on PlayStation Store.

Also, as part of PlayStation Stars, we are unveiling a new type of reward called “digital collectibles.” Collectibles are as diverse as our portfolio of products and franchises. They are digital representations of things that PlayStation fans enjoy, including figurines of beloved and iconic characters from games and other forms of entertainment, as well as cherished devices that tap into Sony’s history of innovation. There will always be a new collectible to earn, an ultra rare collectible to strive for, or something surprising to collect just for fun.

We hope this new program brings to mind past gaming memories while making you excited for the future with PlayStation: commemorating the gaming eras we created together, charting new paths to explore, and bringing players together for global celebrations. This is just the beginning for PlayStation Stars, and the program will continue to evolve over time. We’re currently doing some early tests on this program before launching it later this year in phased regional rollouts.

PlayStation Stars would have so much synergy with PlayStation Home 2.0 lol.

They could have made a SoP with the 7 titles you put out.

Seems like you only won't be able to use The Verge on the console, so you can still access the content as long as you acess the verge on another system. It is more like Verge isn't available on PS anymore.

But yes that is something I have against all digital.

Don’t know about other parts of the world

But both the Jotnar and Collectors Editions were put for sale here in Australia whilst the former went sold out between 5-10 mins the latter one took about 2 hours.

Launch will be huge, if Sony puts effort to increase the stock for that week, they can easily sell 1 million+ units WW

I'm lowkey a little worried about the Bungie acquisition when it comes to their influence on Sony's live service endeavors. Especially as a now retired Destiny player that put 2500+ hours into the franchise and have great regret in doing so the 3 things that 6 years of me playing Destiny taught me about Bungie progressively got with the franchise is that they've mastered drip feed content, monetization, and still are very inconsistent with what they release.

The Witch Queen came out to great reviews and players loved it, but Bungie's seasonal content is insanely hit or miss. I still talk to my old clan and they're very disappointed with the current season and everything's broken lol. I haven't played in over a year but that still sounds like the same Destiny I left. The consistency of the game is Bungie's problem alone, but, when it comes to the drip feed content and monetization, that's what really worries me about their influence on Sony's live service games.

The Destiny community has always complained about how slow it takes for new content to arrive. Not just the hardcore content creators where all they do for a living is play Destiny, but for the regular player that maybe puts several hours a week into the game at most. Then Bungie has just about every monetization system in the book for their game. That's only grown too. Most recently, they paywalled the Dungeons for the Witch Queen expansion to the Deluxe edition, and before that, made the grind for transmog insane and timegated to where if you really wanted to take advantage of transmog, you had to pay up. I'm hoping Sony doesn't utilize Bungie's same tactics, but only time will tell since that's one of the biggest reasons why Sony bought the studio.

Man if you put 2500h on the game it can hardly be said that the developer failed you. Perhaps you have just grow tired of it.

Unfortunately, the next acquisition is likely to be Deviation Games, given their partnership and all. 

I probably should've broken it down. I put about three quarters of that time in the first Destiny from 2014-2017. The launch of Destiny 2 was a complete dud as well as that first year of DLC. The first big expansion for Destiny 2, Forsaken in September 2018, was AMAZING!!! But, that's when Bungie started walking into the seasonal live service model. Then season after season was when the drip feed content and heavy monetization really began to take shape into what it is now and my interest began waning at that point.  

The gunplay in Destiny is top notch no doubt! The gameplay is there and gets you invested hardcore! But seeing how the business model of the franchise used to be to what is is now, it's night and day. But, Bungie makes a TON of money from what it is now. So they definitely took the more profitable route.

Then just to add salt to the wound, starting in 2020, Bungie began removing paid content out of the game. So what you pay for, has a chance of being removed/vaulted from the game just a year or two later, for an unknown amount of time. That's when I really started to lose major interest in the game. The Forsaken expansion is all but removed from the game completely minus an explorable area, Dreaming City, along with the main raid (Last Wish) and dungeon (Shattered Throne) that were part of the expansion. 

I do agree those seem like bad moves against costumers.

The rythm of releases I can't comment since I haven't played it.

GT7 have been feeding us with like 3 cars, 1 track and 2 missions per month and since I play every day it seems little, but it will accumulate long term.

About the mtx and what not, I never pay for stuff, but yes there is always to much venue for companies to go greed over the limits.