Sony created a PR disaster, who made “old users inferior to dogs”?

Original link: https://www.ifanr.com/app/1490797

I envy her being able to buy it at full price, and she envy the cheap and comprehensive Microsoft Xbox Game Pass game subscription service.

Sony seems to be feeling the pressure, and finally upgraded the PlayStation Plus (hereinafter referred to as PS Plus) game subscription service this year, and recently announced the game lineup and price.

Before the players were happy, the PS Plus service was launched, and the old players broke out: they are also members, why do old players have to pay so much for the upgrade package?

Upgrade service, but also make up the discount difference? !

According to Sony’s official tweet, PS Plus is divided into three levels, each with a different price, providing classic games such as “Devil’s Soul”, “NBA 2K22”, “Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut”. The difference between the latter two is the number of new games updated every month and the support for classic games such as the original PS and PS3 platforms.

At present, the PS Plus service has been launched in Asia, and the launch in Japan will be postponed to June 2.

For old players, PS Plus’ current game lineup is generally attractive. After all, most of the games have been played, and novice players are obviously more suitable.

Of course, there are still many old players who value classic games and Sony’s updated game lineup later, but when they plan to upgrade services, they find that they need to make up a lot of money.

This is because before the PS Plus service was upgraded, Sony had launched a corresponding discounted remake of the membership service. In addition, the membership service had increased in price in 2019. With the idea of ​​​​using low-cost recharge for ten years, many old players They have been recharged for several years, even ten years.

But the upgrade service of PS Plus this time obviously requires players to make up the difference, and it is not only to make up the difference for one year, but also how many years of membership services have been recharged before, and all the difference must be made up at one time.

The biggest flaw is that the price difference is calculated by converting the previous discount into the full price, which means that the previous low-price discount is completely invalid when upgrading the service, and some old players will only need one-time needs under the layered increase. Recharge more than 3,000 yuan or more to upgrade the PS Plus subscription service.

This can detonate the old players. This is different from the telecom operators’ preferential activities that do not cover old users. It is not that the discounts cannot be obtained, but the previous discounts have to be paid for by themselves.

On the other hand, even the options provided by Sony PS Plus are not flexible enough to make up the difference. All recharge time periods must be filled at one time. If you have recharged for 10 years before, you will have to make up the difference for 10 years, even if you provide monthly, quarterly, The annual supplementary price difference option is also better.

Originally, the Sony PS Plus subscription service was used by players to compare with Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass. Compared with Microsoft’s previous solution of upgrading Gold members to Xbox Game Pass members for 10 Hong Kong dollars, the gap between the two came out.

To a certain extent, the price difference is Sony’s practice to protect the PS Plus membership price system. After all, many low-cost Xbox Game Pass membership accounts are converted from previous gold members. Sony obviously does not want to go the old way of Microsoft.

It’s just not flexible enough to always hurt the player.

Even if Sony updates the terms on the grounds of insufficient initial preparation and provides flexible recharge time period options, will the affected old players continue to trust Sony? This may be a question mark.

Just today, the Sony PSN store launched the Days of Play special event, “Cyberpunk 2077”, “Resident Evil: Village”, “Ghost Line: Tokyo” and other games have various discounts.

In the comment area of ​​the special offer information, there are almost unanimous comments of “don’t dare to buy, afraid of making up the difference”.

Making up the difference is like a stone thrown into the lake, and the waves that follow affect not only the old players, but also the new players who enter the market with coins.

Subscription is the future, but it’s not something you can do

In addition to players, developers also have complaints about PS Plus. Lorne Lanning, the game producer of “Strange World: Soul Storm”, publicly stated in an interview that the game was launched on PS Plus, which almost destroyed the game’s subsequent sales.

Originally, “Strange World: Soul Storm” was released in 2021, but the post-pandemic impact was postponed to early 2022. Before the release, Sony approached Lorne lanning and expressed its willingness to pay a sum of money for the game to be launched on the PS Plus service for a month. Member players It can be downloaded for free.

Based on the impact of the epidemic on PS5 shipments, Lorne lanning estimated that the drop of games on PS Plus would be between 50,000 and 100,000, and finally Lorne lanning accepted the deal.

It turned out to be unexpected, and Strange World: Soulstorm accidentally became the No. 1 game on PS Plus, with more than 4 million downloads.

In Lorne lanning’s view, this will greatly affect the sales of the game on platforms such as PC and Xbox, and lose many potential consumers.

There are certain loopholes in this statement. The download volume cannot be completely regarded as the potential purchase volume. Many players download it because the membership is free.

Therefore, Lorne lanning said in the interview that what he wants is to pay for the gradient, and to provide additional shares according to the download volume.

The idea of ​​sharing is not new. The question is whether this data is accurate. Many people just download and not play, and some people think that the online time of players should be used as the standard for sharing payment.

Whether it is an old player or a game developer like Lorne lanning, there are “complaints” about the payment method of PS Plus.

Today, the subscription system has long been regarded as the future of games, and major game companies are competing to reorganize their services, but the uncertainty of the “future” is often ignored.

Players can play more games at cheaper prices, game developers focus on content production, and don’t have to worry about game sales. The platform side can obtain continuous revenue and player stickiness. It seems that the subscription system is almost a perfect win-win solution.

The rising cost of game production has been ignored. Whether subscription revenue can cover one or even decades of high-cost AAA production is something that every game manufacturer needs to consider.

Even Microsoft, which is respected by players, said that prices may increase in the future. After all, members will not maintain high growth all the time. At the same time, Microsoft also restricts the sales period of Xbox Game Pass members, which can only be recharged for a maximum of 3 years.

This is obviously to prevent old members from excessively recharging in advance because they are worried about price increases, and low-priced “ten-year” membership services will flow out of the market, which will affect revenue and affect the operation of the platform.

The Sony PS Plus subscription service makes up the price difference, that is, it has not done a good job in the migration of old players who have recharged for many years. When the subscription package changes, can players continue to pay.

Some time ago, the animation of “Douluo Dalu” was shortened from 20 minutes to 15 minutes due to the epidemic. The direct suspension of “Swallow the Stars” caused controversy among members and users, and the matter of requesting a refund of the membership fee is exactly the same as the Sony PS Plus supplementing the price difference.

People’s expectation for the subscription system is that content or services can be updated stably, but this requires a company’s long-term operational capabilities, and not all companies can do it. Obviously, Sony is not ready.

Limiting the recharge time and choosing a more flexible recharge cycle not only protects the rights and interests of consumers, but also prevents the platform from falling into a dilemma like Sony.

Is it to smash the teeth and swallow it in the stomach, cancel the price difference and let the market flow out of low-priced PS Plus members for ten years, or protect the income, force the price difference and lose the trust of some players?

This is not an easy-to-make multiple-choice question.

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