There’s always a subscription service to dump money into. Even some printers have them now. But not all of them are created equal, which is quite clear in the gaming space. While Nintendo Switch Online has only had a few years to grow over on Nintendo’s platform, it still can’t stack up to PlayStation Plus. PlayStation’s subscription service has, after almost 15 years, budded into a great service that is an essential purchase for most players for many reasons.
Here are five reasons why PlayStation Plus is still superior to Nintendo Switch Online:
Value
It is true that PlayStation Plus is more expensive than Nintendo Switch Online. Essential, Extra, and Premium are $79.99, $134.99, and $159.99, respectively, annually, while Nintendo Switch Online and Expansion Pack are $19.99 and $49.99, respectively, per year. It’s a huge leap in price, especially when comparing extremes, but Sony’s service offers way more value that makes it worth the extra cash.
Share Play allows users to play co-op with others over the internet using just one copy of the game, which is perfect for fighting games or other titles that prioritize local play. Cloud streaming is quite useful, too, especially for those with the PlayStation Portal or any other type of portable streaming system. Both have limited-time trials, but Premium has a more extensive lineup of them. The included Sony Pictures catalog may not be filled with classics, but it does have a handful of well-regarded movies like District 9, The Final Girls, and Big Fish.
The monthly game lineup is the most appealing part since it, for all three Plus tiers, constantly cycles in new things to try out. Essential gets at least three games a month, while those with Extra and Premium get around a dozen or so titles per drop. PSVR2 games have also been slowly making their way to Premium, giving it even more value.
New Games
Nintendo Switch Online has come with a few new titles like Tetris 99 and F-Zero 99, as well as DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Splatoon 3, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but that hardly competes with how many new games PlayStation Plus Essential and Extra players get. Day-one Essential drops are getting increasingly rare, but the service does still see a few, like Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, Death Note Killer Within, and Foamstars.
Extra has had a lot more new titles, ranging from The Plucky Squire, Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, Dave the Diver, Animal Well, Teardown, Sea of Stars, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Moving Out 2, Tchia, and Stray. While they may not be the big blockbusters Sony’s last few consoles have been defined by, these smaller titles have almost all been received relatively well and let players try freshly released games without having to wait for a sale. There is value in Nintendo’s selection of older games, but it’s hard to compete with so many brand-new titles, especially since this more contemporary lineup is naturally going to be easier to play for most people.
Trophies for Old Games
Premium and both tiers of Nintendo’s service pride themselves on classic titles from yesteryear. Sony offers PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP games, while Expansion Pack has NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, Nintendo 64, and Game Boy Advance games. And while most of these games can more or less be easily emulated in other places, trophy support gives PlayStation Plus an edge over those alternative methods.
Many PSP, PS1, and PS2 games have launched with trophies or even gotten them patched in after the fact, giving returning fans potential new ways to play old classics and adding an extra incentive for new players. Many of them also offer up easy Platinum trophies that get even easier with the rewind feature, which also makes some of the more dated games more palatable. It also seems like games with trophies are more appealing to players, as the top five most-played Premium titles of 2023 and nine out 10 of the most-played Premium titles in 2024 had trophy support. This seemingly small addition gives players a reason to dabble in these old games for more than 10 minutes.
A More Varied Game Lineup
As a gamer, I’d say it’s a disadvantage to focus on building a service primarily based on games from the past. This approach will significantly limit the variety of gaming experiences that players can enjoy. Thus, PlayStation Plus takes the lead again due to this narrow scope.
Extra’s lineup of games spans from platformers like A Hat in Time, a lot of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, cooperative shooters like Back 4 Blood, touching narrative adventures like Valiant Hearts, open-world action games like Ghost of Tsushima, and indie soulslikes like Thymesia. Premium’s lineup of older games spans genres and time periods, touching on games like first-person shooters like TimeSplitters, platformers like Ape Escape, isometric shooters like Killzone: Liberation, and fighting games like Tekken 2.
The gamut varies between tiers, but even the three Essential titles usually vary wildly in genre. For example, March’s lineup had a recent fantasy RPG, a collection of retro Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games, and an upgrade of a Wii-era Sonic entry. Regardless of the tier, the variety is impressive.
Multiplayer
While PC players might laugh at the notion of paying for online multiplayer, console players aren’t so lucky. Nintendo jumped on the bandwagon of charging console users for online play last and it shows. It’s just not the most popular place to play online games, as some of the biggest online titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Valorant, Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Grand Theft Auto V, and Destiny 2 aren’t even on the Switch.
Having a smaller pool of multiplayer games inherently weakens the value of this pillar of the service. Just about every big multiplayer franchise is on PlayStation, meaning that Plus subscribers aren’t missing out and have access to most online multiplayer games. And even though Discord is a popular chat service across platforms, having to use a separate app for voice chat on the Switch is just an extra insult to injury.
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2025-03-16 23:14