Gamepass has become more and more popular throughout the gaming audiences here in Brazil and other countries where games are a bit too expensive - with its relatively low price, specially for gamers who don't care about other streaming services such as Netflix.
I've been using Gamepass for about 3 years now and I feel like I'm in a good spot to talk about it, whereas with PS Plus I've barely had a month of experience, but I guess I'll try to contrast my long experience with Gamepass with my short first impressions of PS Plus.
I'm going to try not to be biased here, after all I love all platforms and equally as long as they're not Nintendo and Epic Games (lol).
An Important Thing
This one Xbox takes the cake for a simple reason: Day one releases.
I don't think we'll ever see a first party Playstation title showing up on day one in PS Plus Extra/Deluxe/Premium... That's just not how Sony runs things.
Meanwhile on the Xbox side of things, we've recently gotten Starfield, Forza Motorosport (8), Like a Dragon Gaiden and more.
This just doesn't happen on PS Plus, games take years to show up in the service.
Platforms
Whilst Sony's offering works on the PS4 and PS5, Microsoft takes the cake here again since you can easily play their games on Xbox One, Series AND PC.
Not to mention that with cloud gaming that can be expanded to even older smart TVs or phones. It was quite the experience to beat Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon Ishin on my TV using a Playstation controller.
Classics
PS Plus has quite a good selection of older titles however, and they're nice enough to give you hours and hours of gameplay, but they just don't match up to Xbox's offerings.
We've got stuff like the incredible Black FPS titles from 2006 and other Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One classics that we can be sure will never leave the service.
When Does Stuff Leave and Get Added Anyway?
Microsoft makes things very evident with their blog posts, tweets and on the Xbox homescreen when games are being added and when they're leaving. Sony just doesn't communicate this as well, besides the Essential titles, their lack of warning is sorely... Well... bad.
Quality
It's often said that quality trumps quantity and if you're a fan of PS titles then I can't really argue against PS Plus here. God of War, Miles Morales, Uncharted, Horizon Zero Dawn and more are incredible experiences anyone and their dogs and cats should experience.
Quantity
But again... The quantity in Xbox's Gamepass is incredible. There's just so much stuff new, old and anything in between.
The Most Important Point for the Future
Cloud.
Microsoft has been doing cloud gaming for years now, and I'm absolutely sure a good chunk of their userbase comes from cloud gamers who simply cannot afford a console or a high end PC.
Sony also does this, although it's a bit more obscure as to where and how you can play, but if you own a Playstation console, you can absolutely play a bunch of titles without ever downloading them, it's really neat!... It's what I would say if I was "privileged" enough to live in a country where this works.
But nope. It doesn't work in Brazil.
It's total BS, but for some reason their cloud gaming service that holds a huge chunk of PS3 classics and other games that I don't really want to install does not work in my country.
Xbox Cloud Gaming has been working here for years now and for all those years all I've heard were rumors that PS Now would be coming here, but still nothing.
So, in my opinion when looking at PS Plus with regards to Xbox Gamepass, there are still a couple of things missing and I'm here to vent my frustration:
- Better Communication with Consumers
- More First Party Titles (Spiderman is missing for instance)
- More Day One titles
- More Classics
- A Cloud Service that Works Everywhere
I'll keep paying for what PS Plus currently offers, alongside Gamepass for their Cloud Gaming solutions whenever a new interesting game comes out there, but it really makes me sad to see that PS Plus could be so much more...
And of course, they're jacking up the price.
Thanks for reading.
