PS Plus to hit 50 million subscribers this year thanks to new tiers

Sony is confident its new three-tiered PlayStation Plus subscription will help boost paying users to a new record level.

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PlayStation Plus subscribers will hit 50 million in Fiscal Year 2022--or at least that's what Sony is planning. The company believes the value proposition of its new PS Plus Essential, Extra, and Premium tiers will catalyze this significant growth. For reference, Sony hit 48 million PS Plus subscribers in Q3'21 and dropped to 47.4 million in Q4; Sony would have to accelerate adoption by 2.6 million users to hit this target. That kind of growth hasn't happened since 2019.

There's one secret key to this growth: PlayStation Now subscribers. Sony is phasing out PS Now subscriptions and will instead merge them into the new PS Plus Premium tier. That means all existing PS Now subscribers will be counted as PS Plus subscribers.

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"We have just this week launched our new revised PlayStation Plus service. I think if we execute well as we implement this service beyond Asia and then Japan and in U.S. and then to Europe, the possibility for us to significantly grow our subscriber base is really real, particularly as sales of PS5 consoles start to accelerate extremely rapidly," Jim Ryan said during the Sony Games & Network Services business segment event.

"The other vector of this of course is that the new service allows us to optimize not only the number of subscribers, but to offer the possibility for subscribers to join our second-tier or third-tier to access our range of really attractive features and gaming propositions.

"If we do that, if we are successful in that, not only will our number of subscribers grow, but the average ARPU of each subscriber will also correspondingly increase. There are opportunities on both vectors: The number of subscribers and the average ARPU of each of those subscribers."

Read Also: PlayStation Plus pro-rated upgrade fees: Here's how much they cost

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