PS Plus Lost 1.9m Subscribers Since Revamp But Sony Expects to Recover

Sony Interactive Entertainment has lost nearly two million PS Plus subscribers since the service’s revamp. The company published its financial results for the second quarter of FY2022, revealing that PS Plus currently has 45.4 million users, down from 47.2 million in FY2021 (3.81 percent year-on-year decrease) and down from 47.3 million in the first quarter of the year before the revamp (a four percent year-on-year decrease). However, the company expects to bounce back.

How Sony plans to recover from loss of PS Plus users

According to a presentation delivered by chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki, there was an unprecedented increase in PS Plus subscribers during Covid-19 as global lockdowns forced people indoors. Now that things are somewhat back to normal and there is an “increase in
opportunities to go outside,” PS Plus has lost some of that luster. On top of this, Sony attributes the loss of subscribers to sharply declining sales of older games and a greater decline than it expected in user engagement among PS4 players.

Interestingly, PS5 has significantly more PS Plus subscribers than PS4, according to Totoki, and as a result, Sony is “putting even more effort into accelerating the penetration of PS5 hardware” to recover. The company also believes that improving the service and running promotions will help.