PS Plus day one releases would "deteriorate first-party title quality"

Sony boss Hikori Totoki has said that first-party PlayStation Plus games cannot adopt the day one release method that Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service uses for its AAA releases, or PS5 and PS4 first-party games will drop in quality.

With Sony's financial call yesterday, there was an interesting bit of news about the new PlayStation Plus service. As noted by VGC, Sony is convinced that the Xbox Game Pass model of day one AAA releases on to the subscription wouldn't work for PlayStation Studios games.

PlayStation Plus probably won't get God of War: Ragnarök, Spider-Man 2, or Horizon VR on release

Answering as part of a Q&A session at the end of the financial results, Sony CFO Hikori Totoki game commented on how PlayStation first-party games will be released onto the new PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium tiers.

"AAA titles on PlayStation 5, if we distribute them on the subscription service we may need to shrink the investment needed for that. That will deteriorate the first-party title quality and that is our concern,” Totoki reportedly stated. “So, we want to make sure we spend the appropriate development costs to have solid products and titles to be introduced in the right manner.”

In short, we won't be seeing the upcoming slate of Sony first-party like Xbox is currently doing with its day one releases. This would include God of War: Ragnarök by Santa Monica Studios, Marvel's Wolverine and Marvel's Spider-Man by Insomniac Games, as well as Firesprite's Horizon: Call of the Mountain VR game. This reiterates PlayStation chief Jim Ryan's claim that the day one release would break a "virtuous cycle" of quality that the company has been producing.

What do you think of the news? Is this a strategy you are fine with? Are you happy to pay for full releases? Let us know in the comments!

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Written by Kes Eylers-Stephenson

Editor Kes is our resident expert in PlayStation and other gaming news. He writes about exclusives like The Last of Us and God of War, PS Plus news, and his favourite games — The Witcher, Assassin’s Creed, and explosive racers — before an evening swim.