Table of Contents
For a while after Netflix redefined how we watch movies and TV shows, it seemed like gaming was immune to the entertainment industry's overt shift to streaming. There was the used game market to worry about, not to mention the rental market and the technical limitations of ensuring people couldn’t play downloaded games once their subscriptions ran out. Plus, while movies have theatrical runs that help them recoup some money before going to streaming, games have always been direct-to-consumer releases. How do you ensure big budget releases are profitable if people are playing them through a blanket streaming subscription rather than buying them for full price?
Then Xbox Game Pass happened. With the rise of digital game purchases overall, brick-and-mortar rental and used games stores also aren’t as prevalent as they used to be, leaving a perfect market opening for Microsoft to swoop in and occupy. Starting off famously cheap, the service quickly gained popularity as the first real “Netflix for games,” enough so that other companies felt obligated to compete.
The biggest of these competitors, predictably, is Sony, which quickly amped up its existing PlayStation Plus program to become another Netflix-style subscription service in the vein of Game Pass. Essentially, Microsoft and Sony add games to their services every month, you stream or download them (depending on the game and your subscription tier), and you lose access to them once your subscription runs out or the games are removed from the service. If you subscribe again, you can pick up your save where you left off, and you can even play downloaded games offline, assuming your system occasionally checks into the internet to ensure you still have an active subscription.
And yet, there’s still the question of profitability. The companies take different approaches when it comes to which of their big-budget titles get added to their services and when (although they each try to make up for any content gaps in unique ways). There’s definitely still some hesitance to the gaming subscription model amongst publishers, with some more willing than others to sacrifice direct sales to pack value into their subscription plans. The question is, then: Does Game Pass still offer the unmatched value it once did, or has Sony usurped its throne?
Streaming and platforms
Maybe the biggest difference between PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass is where they’re available. Despite their names, you can actually use these services on more devices than just their respective consoles.
Microsoft has a pretty large gaming presence, since in addition to Xbox consoles, it’s also the company behind Windows. The company sells Game Pass plans for both, but even if you don’t have either an Xbox or a PC, you can still technically use Game Pass via cloud streaming. Through Xbox’s mobile and web apps, as well as Microsoft’s partnerships with companies like Amazon and Samsung, players without dedicated gaming hardware can instead access Game Pass on phones, in web browsers, though an Amazon Fire TV Stick, and even on select smart TVs or a Meta Quest headset. You’ll have to get the highest service tier for Game Pass to work with these devices, there could be some lag while you play, and some games won’t be able to be streamed, but it could be a handy way to play if you only game occasionally and don’t feel like keeping a console around for when you get the itch. That’s another innovation these services can have over the traditional system.
Sony, meanwhile, has fewer places where you can play PlayStation Plus games, but there are still more than you might expect. In addition to PlayStation consoles, subscribers to PlayStation Plus’ highest tier can stream content to a PC app and the PlayStation Portal handheld, but phones, smart TVs, and streaming sticks are still off-limits—and the PC app can't stream PlayStation 5 games.
Game Pass is the clear winner here, but regardless of your preferences, both at least provide a way to play even if you don’t own a gaming console.
Winner: Xbox Game Pass
Tiers and pricing
PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass each offer a number of tiers, and both Sony and Microsoft require you to own at least the base tier of your console’s respective service to use online multiplayer. In that way, these subscription services have also replaced older programs like Xbox Live Gold. For the most part, pricing and features are pretty equal here, but there are a few key differences.
Starting with the base tier of each service, Xbox Game Pass Core and PlayStation Plus Essential, both options cost $10/month, which will net you online multiplayer, access to exclusive deals, and a few free games. How you’ll get those games is a little different depending on your service, though. On Game Pass Core, subscribers have continual access to a select library of 25 free titles. PlayStation Plus Essential, meanwhile, gives out a handful of free games once a month, and they’re yours to play for as long as you’d like after redeeming them, assuming you stay subscribed. This means that, while Game Pass Core gives you more free games at the outset, you could eventually build a larger collection of free PlayStation Plus games over time.
The next tiers up are Xbox Game Pass Standard and PlayStation Plus Extra. Each priced at $15/month, these options carry over the benefits of the lower tiers, plus give you access to most of each service’s respective libraries. This is probably the sweet spot for most people, but Sony and Microsoft both hold out on some parts of their libraries unless you go all-out.
That brings me to the highest tier option for both platforms, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Sony PlayStation Plus Premium. This is the only tier with a pricing difference, as Game Pass Ultimate is $20/month and PlayStation Plus Premium is $18/month. Both carry over the benefits from the other tiers, come with a few side bonuses, and expand the selection of available games. Really, though, there are quite a few differences that are worth going through.
The biggest is in how each upgrade expands your game library. With Game Pass Ultimate, you’ll get access to certain new games at launch. While these can include games from partner studios, you can usually expect them to be titles from studios Microsoft owns, like Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. PlayStation Plus Premium also occasionally gets day one games, but doesn’t gate them off from the lower tiers. Instead, upgrading nets you access to the Classics Catalog, which includes games from the PS1 to PS3 (Xbox allows Game Pass Standard owners to play older titles without upgrading). Which approach you’ll prefer probably depends on which company’s exclusives you like more, as well as how frequently day one releases happen for each service. (I’ll get into that a bit more in the Game Library section.)
There are also partner subscriptions, with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate giving you a free EA Play membership and PlayStation Plus Premium giving you a free Ubisoft+ Classics membership. Again, which one will appeal to you more will depend on what type of games you like to play, but it’s worth bringing up that EA Play on its own is $6/month, while Ubisoft+ Classics is $8/month.
There are also the cloud streaming benefits discussed in the last section, which let you play Game Pass titles across most devices with a screen, or PlayStation Plus on PS4/5, the PS Portal, and (albeit without PS5 games) on PC. Again, Xbox is better value here.
Finally, there are the exclusive perks. For Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, these take the form of certain in-game benefits in participating free-to-play titles. PlayStation Plus Premium instead focuses on access to the Sony Pictures Core catalog of movies, a cut down version of the Crunchyroll anime library, and Game Trials. Game Trials give you limited-time access to over 100 games, sort of like expanded demos. The amount of time you get depends on the game, and any progress you make will be carried over if you buy the full title. Still, it’s not as generous as it seems—a lot of PlayStation’s biggest games still haven’t come to the PlayStation Plus library in full, instead only coming out as Game Trials. Microsoft, meanwhile, is much more likely to give subscribers full access to games as part of Game Pass.
Overall, the services are pretty neck and neck when it comes to pricing, with a lot of the pros and cons depending on what you like to play. But there is an elephant in the room I haven’t addressed: Microsoft limits Game Pass tiers depending on which platform you play on. Core and Standard are only available on console, but on the flip side, there’s a fairly generous PC-only plan that comes with many of the same benefits as Ultimate but only costs $12/month. That’s great for Windows players, but has to feel like a bit of a slap in the face to Xbox owners. Plus, the only way to access your Game Pass library on both your Xbox and your PC is to subscribe to Ultimate, which is annoying if you frequently swap between devices.
With that in mind, and also taking into account that Sony’s highest tier is $2 cheaper than Microsoft’s, I’m going to give this category to PlayStation. Especially because you can actually get a discount on PlayStation Plus Premium by subscribing to a few months at once, which, barring special promotions, isn’t possible with Game Pass.
Winner: PlayStation Plus
Game library
No matter how many platforms you let people play on, or how many promotions you throw at them when they sign up, the real strength of a gaming subscription is in how many games it gives you access to. There are a few categories you can judge by here, including new releases, exclusive games, retro games, and overall game variety, and despite both services putting in a valiant effort, when you look at everything together, there’s still a clear winner at the end of the day.
When it comes to new releases, the answer is clearest: Xbox Game Pass wins. In recent years, Microsoft has gone on a buying spree, scooping up popular developers and even entire publishers, including Obsidian Entertainment, Ninja Theory, Double Fine, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard. Health of the game industry at large aside, this means Microsoft now has a huge stable of talent releasing anticipated blockbusters on a regular, year-round schedule. That alone isn’t unique, but what is unique is that Microsoft will usually put games from these studios on Game Pass Ultimate at launch, which means there’s always some shiny new AAA reason to subscribe.
PlayStation Plus, meanwhile, is a bit more stingy with recent games. Smaller games like Blue Prince or Sea of Stars have come to the service on day one, but while these are great adds, they’re less expensive to buy outright and don’t quite feel as generous as, say, putting Spider-Man 2 on PlayStation Plus at launch—plus, Game Pass got those games at launch, too.
Ultimately, it’s not uncommon to buy a month of Game Pass just to play the latest Doom or Elder Scrolls, saving you about $50 off a full AAA price tag (and even more if you subscribe to the PC Game Pass plan). The same practice just does not exist for Sony’s latest tentpoles, and it’s probably the biggest knock against PlayStation Plus.
But what about older exclusives? Here, Sony fares a bit better, as it does seem to eventually add some of its big games to its subscription service. Older Sony console exclusives, including both of the Norse-themed God of War titles, are there, as are Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the Uncharted games. The latest Ratchet game is on PS Plus as well, as is Final Fantasy VII Remake.
And yet, some heavy hitters are still missing. Neither Spider-Man nor Spider-Man 2 are on PlayStation Plus, nor is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth anywhere to be seen. The Last Of Us Part II is absent, and none of the Horizon Games are anywhere to be found. This is especially frustrating as someone who generally prefers Sony’s exclusives to Microsoft’s. I’d like to give this point to the company with the games I enjoy playing the most, but in truth, the selection is so scattershot that Game Pass is still a better bet even when it comes to older exclusives.
Competition heats up a bit more when it comes to overall variety, though. If you toss aside exclusives and day one releases and just treat these libraries as backlogs that’ll always give you something to play, I’d say both are roughly equivalent. PlayStation Plus has 607 games, while Xbox Game Pass has 481, and the truth is, you’re never going to work your way through either list. Big and small games, including indie darlings, are present on both, and there’s actually a good amount of overlap between the libraries. Whichever you choose, there’ll be a little something for you regardless of your genre preferences, although you’ll probably have to sort through a lot of games you don’t care about to get to what you like.
Personally, I’ve enjoyed playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on PlayStation Plus and Persona 3 Reload on Xbox Game Pass, neither of which are available on the competing subscription service. To me, that means the overall offerings tend to be pretty neck-and-neck, and the fine details of which service’s games you’ll prefer really depends on what you’re into. I’m gonna call this a tie, but my suggestion is to only subscribe a month at a time, when you have something specific you want to play. That way, you can search for which library appeals to you more before paying. But regardless of which you pick, there’s a lot to recommend on both.
With one exception: Sony has Xbox beat on retro games. Mostly, that’s just a consequence of the Japanese company’s console business having been around longer, but it’s also a bit of a fumble on Microsoft’s part.
Case in point: there are no original Xbox games on Game Pass. There are some remakes, like Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but if you’re looking for OG Xbox games in their original forms, you’re out of luck. Even Xbox 360 games are few and far between, although there are a handful of games from before the Xbox era that are available on Game Pass through their Xbox 360-era digital re-releases. Weirdly, the most dedication you'll see to retro games on Game Pass is from the recent Retro Classics line, which is largely made up of Atari-era games Microsoft got the rights to when it bought Activision. It's cute, but Xbox can certainly do better.
Meanwhile, Sony has 149 games available from the PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3. These include the Jak games, the Ape Escape games, the older Armored Core games, the Sly Cooper trilogy, and a metric ton of JRPGs. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s certainly a better showing for gamers who appreciate a good vintage. Unfortunately, there are two catches. First, as stated in the "tiers and pricing" section, most of these games are gated behind the “Classics Catalog” category, which you’ll have to subscribe to the Premium tier to get. Second, because of technical limitations, PlayStation 3 games can only be played via cloud streaming, which could mean putting up with lag. Still, this is better than the meager selection for retro gamers on Xbox, so Sony takes the cake here.
Overall, I’d still say Game Pass’ library is generally better value.
Winner: Xbox Game Pass
And the Winner Is...
PlayStation Plus has grown by leaps since it first started to compete with the standard Microsoft set with Game Pass, but it’s clear that when it comes to its most profitable games, Sony’s still a bit hesitant to make them available via a subscription plan. Meanwhile, Microsoft almost seems to see its consoles and its big exclusives simply as vehicles to sell more Game Pass plans, as evidenced by its day one Game Pass releases and recent “This Is an Xbox” ad campaign, which emphasized that you don’t need to own its hardware to play, and pay for, its subscription service.
Game industry insiders have expressed concern about what this could mean for the long-term health of the industry (Microsoft famously shut down one of its more beloved studios for not fitting into its subscription plans shortly after it released the small but well-reviewed Hi-Fi Rush). But while we wait for the future to play out, Game Pass is still packing in as much value as possible to try to establish market dominance. Despite price hikes, Microsoft still seems to be focusing on selling subscriptions first, and appears willing to lose money elsewhere to do it.
The result is that Game Pass now feels like a core part of the Xbox experience, whereas PlayStation Plus comes across as more of a nice-to-have, and not something Sony expects all of its players to subscribe to. I expect this to change in the future, as the gaming industry decides on whether the subscription model is sustainable enough to serve as the new standard. For now, Game Pass’ attempts to woo people over to monthly payments with flashy bonuses means it’s still the most generous gaming subscription out there, and clearly a better overall deal than PlayStation Plus.
