It's brutal any way you put it. When journalists are pointing out stuff fans have been bringing up you know things are bad.
Shocking development for Sony. No idea what kind of ship they are running over there.
I don't know what's going on, either. They've had a really bad last couple of weeks, with the announced closure of the PS Store on PS3/PSP/PS Vita, and now this.
If they want to satisfy their current base of PS4/PS5 players, then they're going to have to make a sudden decision to match or exceed this.
Can they afford to put it on PS+? It’s one of their annual revenue boosters during a typically slower spring quarter.
The amount of money they could potentially lose to “save face“ might not be worth it.
I don't think they'll put it on PS Plus right now. They
might decide to put it on PS Now, as it would give that service a great boost in subscriptions (since PS Plus has so many more subscribers already).
Also, historically speaking, PS Plus games remain accessible to the user as long as the subscription remains active. On PS Now, they sometimes include a time limit before the game leaves the service and becomes inaccessible.
Sony really does have a tough decision here:
- If they add it to either service, then they would be potentially be giving up tens of millions of dollars in lost sales.
- If they don't add it to either service, then it looks like a slap in the face to their most loyal fans, seeing that a competing console has the game for "free" with their subscription service. This would probably cause a good number of fans to buy and support the other system and service much more heavily.
Sony loses money either way. They probably lose more money in the short term with the first option, but stand to lose a lot more money and suffer damage to their reputation in the long term with the second option.