Although many others might have doubts, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Patcher thinks Sony’s just announced Playstation Plus service, the paid add on for its free Playstation Network service, could really take off.
Speaking on the latest episode of Bonus Round, Pachter revealed that he expects any new improvements to the service to be exclusive to PlayStation Plus members. So any neat new additions to online play, such as server hosted tournaments, or a more streamlined trophy interface, and as such, will be exclusive only to Playstation Plus Subscribers, says Patcher, so that non paying subscribers will be left only with basic online play.
“I think that every enhancement to Playstation Network going forward is going to be for Playstation Plus so they’re always going to give you basic online gameplay,” he said.
“I think when they start adding tournaments and new types of achievement systems it’s going to be for Playstation Plus members only and they’ll get a very slow migration over to the $50 a year (£39.99 in the UK).”
Patcher went on to add that the service could really ‘take off,’ predicting a million subscribers by the end of this year, and another million by the end of next year.
“I think Playstation Plus will work,” he said. “You’ll get one million subscribers this year, two million next year, three million the next year and it’ll just slowly build.”
Playstation Plus launches 29th June with a mandatory firmware upgrade.
