Playstation Plus is Not Xbox Live Gold, Stop Comparing June 18, 2010

I saw a lot of articles over the past two days comparing the pros and cons of Xbox Live Gold to Playstation Plus.  Other than the fact that both services charge users fifty dollars a year to use them, they have absolutely nothing in common.  Comparing the two (Microsoft went as far to say that Sony’s imitating them, well more that their service has “attracted imitation”) is like comparing Apples to Zebras, and here’s why.

Xbox Live Gold is practically a required service in order to use full functionality of the Xbox 360.  You cannot play your games online (unless it’s an MMO), or host large party voice chats without paying for the extra service.  You are also forced to wait an extra amount of time to access downloads from the Xbox Live Marketplace

Sony’s doing something completely different with Playstation Plus.  All the features that are currently offered to their current users will continue to be offered.  You will not have to pay anything in order to play multiplayer games online, and still have trophy support and voice chat.  Playstation Home will remain free.  What you will be offered for paying the premium is access to bonus digitally distributed content.  To start off with you will have early access to beta tests and demos, as well as full PS1 and PSP Minis games.  You’ll also have access to Core, the digital magazine for PS3 that reminded me a lot of Substance TV.

My issue with Playstation Plus is that when they announced it at the Sony E3 Conference, the presenter clearly said that you’d have access to your content “for as long as you had the Playstation Plus subscription.”  To me, that means when you terminate your account, you lose access to all those full versions  of games.  So you could in theory be paying fifty a year to play Final Fantasy VII and six other games so you don’t lose access to it.

It’s a much better deal if I wanted Final Fantasy VII to just buy the game and own it outright.  At $10 US per PS1 game I’m paying a heck of a lot less.  Honestly I think they’re lumping Core into this because a lot of people (myself included) did not renew my subscription to the digizine after the first year.  However, that whole year I was constantly getting free game unlock codes as a thank you for being a subscriber.  Let me tell you, getting a copy of Syphon Filter PS1 was a lot more valuable to me than a lot of those issues.

These are not similar services in any way.  Stop comparing them.