Key Takeaways
- Subscription services will likely be a significant component of the future for games.
- PlayStation Plus Premium is cheaper, with a high-quality, growing classic game library.
- Xbox Game Pass Ultimate excels in accessibility with cloud streaming, strong potential, and commitment to day-one games.
It’s too early to tell if subscription services will be the ultimate future for how we play games, but I can confidently say they will at least be a major component of it. I’m sure there will always be a market for people who want to purchase their games individually, just as there are those who still prefer to own copies of films or TV shows. PlayStation and Xbox have both embraced this new model of multiple subscription levels for their online services, offering access to various game catalogs for download, streaming, or both. Being in the business of playing games for a living, this seemed like an ideal product for me in particular. I mean, why buy every game when I can just subscribe to a monthly service?
I decided to subscribe to the most expensive tiers of both services for an entire year to compare them head-to-head in multiple categories to determine which one is the superior service.
Things aren’t that simple, of course. Between the various tiers and what they offer, PlayStation Plus Premium and Game Pass Ultimate are more diverse than you might expect. In a move I wouldn’t suggest anyone else make, I decided to subscribe to the most expensive tiers of both services for an entire year to compare them head-to-head in multiple categories to determine which one is the superior service. There’s a lot to consider, so let’s break it all down.
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Price and key features
Most expensive subscription tiers compared
Eugene Chystiakov / Unsplash
Let’s start with the basics to make sure we’re all on the same page. Premium and Ultimate are both the most expensive subscription tiers for PlayStation and Xbox, respectively. The current cost for one year of Premium is $160 (I subscribed before the recent price increase, but I will weigh my review based on the current price). Ultimate has no yearly plan, so you’ll need to get 12 of the 1-month plans at $17 per month, totaling about $204 a year. Thanks to the discount you get for committing to an entire year of Premium, PlayStation does beat out Xbox in terms of price, even after a significant price increase across all its tiers.
Of course, price doesn’t mean much if there’s nothing you want to play. I’ll compare the catalogs and offerings more deeply, but here’s what each subscription gives you in a broad sense. Starting with Premium again, you will have access to the monthly free games that are yours to keep as long as you’re subscribed and add them to your library within that month. You also get the Games Catalog of PlayStation 4 and 5 titles that rotate on a monthly basis, access to PSP, PS1, and PS2 games for download or streaming, the ability to stream a catalog of PS3 games, and access to time-limited game demos. Additionally, you can stream any game to either the PS4, PS5, or PC.
On the other side, Ultimate has its own games catalog with a combination of games you can download and/or stream, and it allows you to access games on console, PC, and mobile devices. On paper, it looks like Premium has the clear edge, but there’s more to the story.
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Game library
There’s a ton of overlap
Now that the technical stuff is out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff: the games. There’s, unfortunately, no hard and fast rule for how many games are added each month for either service, and, of course, the quality will fluctuate depending on your tastes. However, both services offer a similar number of new titles each month, ranging from 10 to 15 games. At this stage, both services mostly offer current-generation titles with a few PS4/Xbox One games in the mix from time to time, but these can naturally be played on the newer systems as well. Ultimate does have a mix of games that can only be played on PC and a smaller number that only work on the cloud. Premium tends to offer around three classics from the PSP, PS1, or PS2 era each month.
Where Ultimate has a clear lead is in how many new and day-one games it adds to the service. Just about every month, you can count on some games being available day and date on the service, most notably every first-party game. While the deal wasn’t finalized this last year when I was testing, moving forward, that offering will be very strong thanks to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. PlayStation, on the other hand, has been doing a lot more to get day-one games itself, but typically smaller indies or AA games. It will put its first-party games on the service, but at the earliest around a year or more after launch.
There’s a ton of overlap in the games each service has, and I believe Ultimate’s library is larger. However, I never found myself gravitating towards it except when a day-one game caught my eye. I would come back for things like Persona 3 Reload, but otherwise, I didn’t find any of the games being added enticing enough to make me boot up the service. Premium simply had games that fit my tastes more. Most of the Final Fantasy titles were there, the Kingdom Hearts series, and almost all the recent Ubisoft games as well. The classics were immensely disappointing for the majority of my time, but they have been growing to the point of being respectable. If it can keep adding actual classic games especially more PS2 games, I would find that worth the subscription alone.
I will also note that the UI of Premium is objectively better than Ultimate’s. It is much easier to browse games either by platform, genre, or different curated collections than in Ultimate. When I go into Ultimate without knowing what I’m looking for, I feel like I’m wandering around a Blockbuster video store, but all the movies are in random places.
The big flaw that the two share equally will always be that games leave the service every month. There’s no avoiding that, but it’s always a disappointment when a game you are playing, or plan to play, is scheduled to leave.
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Accessibility options
Premium is more limited
I will admit that I’m the stereotypical gaming hermit who doesn’t venture out of my house for prolonged periods of time. Still, I did note and test out what offerings each service had for playing outside my main console.
Premium is absolutely the most limited option in terms of accessing your games out of the house. If you don’t have access to your console, your options are very limited. You can either stream to a PC, which you may not have access to, or use remote play. The latter can be done on mobile as well as PC, but only if you’re on a strong enough connection and remember to leave your console in rest mode before leaving. So unless you’re somewhere with strong Wi-Fi, you’re out of luck.
Ultimate supports native play on consoles and PCs, so no streaming is required there. You can also use cloud streaming on your mobile device, including a ton of handhelds, which don’t require any form of tether to your home console. It isn’t a perfect solution, and I wouldn’t dare play a twitchy game like Halo that way, but you can get by playing slower or turn-based games with no problem even when out for a walk.
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The verdict
PS Plus Premium or Game Pass Ultimate?
I honestly had a much harder time landing on a winner when reviewing this past year. At first, I thought Premium had it in the bag. It’s cheaper, has a higher quality library despite being somewhat smaller, and has a growing list of classic games that speak to my personal nostalgia. That said, I can’t deny that Ultimate has a great base and stronger potential to overtake Premium very soon. It has already spread itself to be usable on almost any device with a screen, regardless of where you are, and the quality of the cloud streaming it uses (while very dependent on your personal internet situation) is a step above what Premium offers. But it’s that commitment to day-one games for all first-party titles that could prove to be its ace in the hole. As it stands, Xbox is still lagging behind PlayStation in terms of exclusives, but that tide is starting to change. Simply having Activision Blizzard games hitting that service might be enough to change the entire conversation.
To make a final call today, I personally say Premium is worth investing in. You get a better deal for the year of content, a great backlog of games including first-party titles (albeit not the newest ones), and what feels like a more curated service than Ultimate. If you’re an RPG fan in particular, there’s no question this is the superior choice. That said, if you don’t particularly care about RPGs or know that you want to be there for anything Xbox, Bethesda, and now Activision Blizzard releases, it would be almost irresponsible not to subscribe to Ultimate. It all comes down to which games you have more patience to wait for to hit the service.
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