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Sony today announced its earnings for the third quarter of its 2022 fiscal year, the three-month period ending in December 2022. One of the facts it disclosed is that the number of users who subscribe to PlayStation Plus are on the rise. While the actual subscriber count isn’t a record number, it’s recovering from a slump following the launch of the “Spartacus” revamp.
The numbers show that PlayStation Plus now boasts a subscriber count of about 46.4 million subscribers. In Q2 of the year (July-September), the subscriber count was at 45.4 million. This was a sharp decline from 47.3 million users in Q1. While there is no causal link between the two, the Spartacus change to PlayStation Plus rolled out in June 2022. The update added two more expensive tiers to the service and added several much-requested features to those more-expensive tiers.
Aside from subscribers, the PlayStation Network (which can be accessed via PS Plus) has 112 million monthly active users. This increase could be, in part, thanks to the increasing supply of PlayStation 5 consoles on the market.
PS Plus and Sony’s efforts to expand into subscriptions
PlayStation Plus has sometimes suffered in comparison with its cousin, Xbox’s Game Pass. While the two offer similar tiered subscription services and a generous library of games for those who partake, there is one crucial difference between the two: Game Pass offers games to users the moment they launch. PlayStation Plus users either must pay full-price for a game at launch or wait until it’s added to the Plus library at a later date, if it ever is.
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However, Sony has increased the number of games it adds to PlayStation Plus each month. While the lion’s share of games go to the upper tiers, they include not only triple-A titles but retro games as well.
Subscriber numbers for PS Plus in Q3 2021 sat at 48 million, so the service still more ground to recover. But the increase in numbers suggests either new users are signing up, or previous subscribers are starting to return.
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Rachel Kaser
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