Sony may take the brunt of making PlayStation Plus game trials for developers
bottom line: To be more competitive with Game Pass, Sony is reportedly planning to require certain games to have limited trials that it will offer to Premium PlayStation Plus subscribers. It’s a pretty decent idea in terms of sales and players – the “try before you buy” perk. But the developers had—and continue to have—concerns about their bottom line.
Earlier this week, Sony notified PlayStation developers that if they release games over $34, they will need to include at least a two-hour trial. Sony intends to use these temporary demos on its PlayStation Plus Premium tier to encourage more customers to pay at least $120 a year. These messages are not confirmed.
On Thursday, an anonymous, knowledgeable source told Kotaku’s Ethan Gatch that the PlayStation Store team would be responsible for creating trial timers. So developers can rest easy knowing Sony isn’t putting too much work on them.
A source told me that the PlayStation Store team will create two-hour developer trials, so this shouldn’t be extra work, although I’ve heard from others that Sony is monetizing the perk and not sharing that revenue with studios. https://t.co/0fYZZSVQxq
— AmericanTruckSongs8 (@ethangach) April 27, 2022
However, some studios are still worried about compensation. Gache says other sources have told him that they are concerned that Sony will profit from its games through the subscription fee for access to trials, and that they will not receive a cut from this.
Sony has not commented or announced any information about this other than a notice sent from its developer portal. It remains to be seen if he will split the amount based on no-sale trials or not. So it’s too early to draw any conclusions.
However, the fact that it only took a few days for an anonymous Sony spokesperson to respond to concerns raised in the media is a good sign that the company is paying attention to the situation. Most likely, Sony will soon release a final and official announcement detailing its plans for this. After all, subscribers should eventually learn about the perk, at which time Sony will likely inform developers as well what their role is in doing so.
