The numbers come amid what has also been a period of high praise from consumers for the service. Part of that praise has been the quality of games released on PS Plus, especially since the PlayStation 5 launched. The service has long offered two games a month for no additional charge to subscribers, but Sony has added a third, exclusively PS5 title to the listings. As good as the numbers are for Sony when comparing year-to-year, they have continued to climb ever since the official fiscal year report was released.

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According to the report, PlayStation Plus had 47.6 million subscribers at the end of the 2020 fiscal year. That number is an increase of 6.1 million subscribers compared to the end of the 2019 fiscal year. The increase from 41.5 million subscribers is officially a record high for PS Plus, but it has since added to that total. The last count was released in February and there have been 200,000 subscriptions added in the subsequent months.

The interest in PS Plus has likely seen an uptick at least in part because PS5 users who had the service immediately received several “free” games via the PS Plus collection. That particular offering worked as both an incentive to subscribe to the service for new PS5 owners, but also an incentive to purchase a PlayStation 5 for current subscribers.

Even when Sony made a misstep with PS Plus in the recent past, such as offering the Control Ultimate Edition just a few months after the current-gen version of the game was released, it didn’t seem to diminish the popularity of the service, according to the report’s data.

The record-high subscriber numbers come alongside what has been an increasing backlash against Xbox Games With Gold due to what users have said were unpopular games. Some in the community have dismissed the lesser offerings on Games With Gold because Microsoft has seemingly turned its attention to Xbox Game Pass, especially over the last year. In that time, the PlayStation Plus competitor added the entire EA Play catalog and a number of Bethesda’s most popular games. In 2021, Game Pass added both Outriders and MLB The Show 21 - a former PlayStation exclusive title - on launch day.

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Source: Resetera