As part of a recent investor presentation, PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now have reached new highs in their subscriber count. Sony announced that with the addition of the numbers from PlayStation Plus (around 2.7 million since April 2020), that number is now around 41.5 million as of March 31st. The company then goes on to say with this new height, it is important “to expand this increased engagement going forward” as they get ready for the release of PlayStation 5 (information on the console are still soon to come).
For PlayStation, Sony said that its recent price drop in popular games such as Marvel’s Spider-Man has helped the engagement grow, along with the list of many anticipated games in the future. PlayStation Plus offers users an online service for its users along with discounts on games and rotating monthly trials.
“At a time when people are voluntarily not going outside, demand for digital entertainment such as games in increasing globally,” Yoshida said. The numbers for PlayStation Now and PlayStation Plus are expected to hit an even sharper rise as the summer months continue.
In the same call, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshiro added that the company’s cloud service, PlayStation Now, has reached over 2.2 million subscribers since stay at home orders were implemented (double the number of subscribers since its initial release). This increase is most likely due to the change where Sony allowed subscribers to download games rather than stream them, along with cutting the subscription price in half in October of 2019.
While these numbers are indeed impressive, PlayStation Now is nowhere near the number of subscribers for Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, which is now at 10 million subscribers. Currently, PlayStation Now costs 5$ a month. There is also a yearly subscription that people can opt-in for rather than paying the doubling monthly price. Along with PlayStation, many other companies are seeing a huge rise in their sales due to the self-isolation of COVID-19 (and a drop in supply to meet that demand).