There is a fantastic quote (that I can’t find for the life of me) from Ken Kutaragi, the father of PlayStation during the PS3 era, in which he more or less stated that Sony would never charge for online play. Kutaragi believed that free online gameplay was a strategic differentiator between PS3 and Xbox 360, and perhaps even a ‘right’ for gamers. Incidentally under Kutaragi, the PlayStation brand arguably suffered.

Fast-forward to PS4 and PlayStation Plus not only became a core component of the console, but transitioned over to pay a structure as well. Funny enough, the PlayStation brand hasn’t been this popular in a decade.

 As part of Sony’s Investor Relations Day today, June 29, the Japanese company confirmed there were 20.8 million PlayStation Plus subscribers for its latest financial year. 

What makes this number striking and important is that these are paid subscribers. As a whole, Sony enjoys around

 60 million total monthly active PlayStation users (across all platforms), meaning around one third pay for PlayStation Plus. 

For comparison in Xbox land, there are

 48 million “active” Xbox Live members, though this counts free and paid accounts. Microsoft has not announced how many Xbox Live Gold members it has. 

There has always been an argument that ‘free’ can out win paid content any day of the week but that mentality is fundamentally false. As long as you give something of value to your audience, consumers won’t balk at paying extra to attain it. Though not a direct comparison, Apple was able to beat services like Napster and Kazaa with iTunes by giving consumers a legal and easy to use method to download music.

In Sony’s case, by intertwining PlayStation Plus into the core functionality of PS4 which can do a whole lot more than PS3 could with its online services, Sony didn’t take something that was previously free and charge for it. Instead they took that service, improved upon it with new and improved features and priced it at

• $10 for 1 month
• $18 for 3 months
• $50 for 12 months

and it seems like consumers are having no problem paying for it. Now if somebody can find that Ken Kutaragi quote for me and send it my way, I’d appreciate it.

Discuss:

Are you a PlayStation Plus subscriber?

[Via GameSpot]