Only 10 can be found on Xbox Game Pass, down from 14 last year, and five of those come from Electronic Arts, whose EA Play library is available to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. PlayStation Plus didn’t cheat subscribers by bringing in games that are offered (or have appeared) in other premium services, either. The PlayStation Plus Essential games’ collection’s average Metacritic score, which we use as a shorthand reference for the catalog’s quality, came in at 78 - more than four points higher than it was in 2021, and the highest since we began this evaluation (beating 2019 by one). Even though Sony has ruled out first-party, day-one releases for the new PlayStation Plus service - something Microsoft promotes relentlessly on Xbox Game Pass (when it has titles to launch, that is) - Sony’s free game offerings remain best-in-class.

In other words, while some PlayStation fans left, and perhaps more bought into the new Extra or Premium subscriptions, PS Plus users stood pat for the most part in 2022.

The company did see an increase in its PS Plus revenue for the first quarter under the new scheme, but only by 10 percent. The service, necessary for pretty much every multiplayer game on the PlayStation 4 and PS5, lost two million paying subscribers - and that figure comes from Sony.

PlayStation Plus’ midyear rebranding and relaunch landed with a thud.