PlayStation blames gamers ‘going outdoors’ for disappointing subscriber numbers

PLAYSTATION has reported disappointing figures for the number of people subscribed to PS Plus and has blamed them on people “going outdoors”.

Sony has reported its financial figures for the first quarter since revamping its game subscription service PS Plus.

PS Plus comes in three tiers: Essential, which offers the same games as the old PS Plus; Extra, which has PS4 and PS5 titles; and Premium, which has games from PlayStation’s older consoles.

Sony was expecting the number of subscribers to rise following the increase, as more games were being offered to players.

However, as reported by VGC, there was actually a small decline in subscribers from 45.4million last quarter to 47.3 million.

In the earnings call, Sony’s CFO Hiroki Totoki blamed a number of reasons for the decline in subscribers.

He said: “There hasn’t been a great momentum as a whole. Also, we didn’t make aggressive promotions during the second quarter.

“More people are now going outdoors, and PS4 and third-party software sales have also been rather sluggish.

“However, PS5 engagement is quite high, so in quarter 3 we expect some recovery.”

PS4 owners are seemingly less likely to pay out for the subscription service, while people are still struggling to get their hands on PS5 consoles.

Another reason the subscription service could be struggling since the revamp is that people have found the new three-tier system confusing.

Each tier offers different rewards, comes at a different price, and can be purchased monthly, quarterly or annually at varying costs.

PlayStation also announced that it would not be providing the majority of big releases at launch.

Smaller titles such as Stray have appeared on release day.

This means that big-name first-party games such as God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Forbidden West are not available via the service.

While Xbox has fewer exclusive games, its big names, such as Forza Horizon 5, were available on launch day.

Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.