PS Plus: 43% of PlayStation MAUs are PlayStation Plus subscribers

PlayStation Plus subscribers hit a record 48 million in holiday 2021, but most PlayStation gamers aren't subscribed to the service.

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Sony's latest financials show the substantial growth of PS Plus and may give a taste on what's to come with PlayStation Spartacus. The service achieved 48 million paying subscribers as of Q3'21, a new all-time high for PS Plus, but most users are still non-subscribers and still enjoy access in games like Fortnite, Warzone, and Rocket League.

Using numbers provided by Sony, we've charted some of the major trends with PlayStation Plus over the last few years. We've been able to calculate the number of subscribers vs non-subscribers by subtracting PS Plus numbers from total MAUs. Then we compared PS Plus subscriber percentages to total MAUs to get a better idea of the overall percentage and quantity of subscribers versus users.

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The results are pretty interesting.

For the purposes of our charts we only went back to Q4'2018. PS Plus has been around a lot longer than that, but this is the period that Sony started reporting total MAUs by the end of the quarter.

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PS Plus started off with 36.4 million subscribers in Q4'18, representing 37% of total MAUs with the majority of total monthly active players being non-subscribers.

Then in Q4'19 that number grew to 41.4 million alongside a proportional raise of non-subscribers. PS Plus accounted for 36% of MAUs during that period.

Q4'20 saw subscribers jump to 47.6 million, making up 42% of MAUs.

That brings us to Fiscal Year 2021. In Q2'21 PS Plus saw its highest share of MAUs with 45% and 47.2 million subscribers. Then that level dropped slightly to 43% while PS Plus hit its record 48 million subscribers.

So what does this tell us? Most PlayStation gamers will not buy into PS Plus, but nearly half of them will.

That could change once PlayStation's new Spartacus subscription releases.

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