PlayStation Plus has lost 2 million subscribers since Sony relaunched the game streaming service with a total makeover in June. According to the latest earnings report Sony released on Tuesday, the number of people subscribed to PS Plus fell from 47.3 million to 45.4 million in Q2 ending September 30, 2022.
Earlier this year, Sony rolled out a new version of PS Plus, which brought the online service more in line with Xbox Game Pass. It features a large library of games for users to access, including retro titles. The revamp has yet to see gains for Sony, though the company says the service now has the lowest number of monthly active users (MAUs) for PlayStation Network since 2020 at 102 million. That’s a steady decrease from 104 million users last year and 103 million in the first quarter.
Sony’s CFO Hiroki Totoki told VGC there were a few factors contributing to the decrease in PS Plus membership numbers. He blames the lack of marketing for the revamped PS Plus, with new tiers tailored to each subscriber’s budget. He also cites the lack of momentum for the new and improved service, as well as people going outside of their homes (no doubt due to relaxed pandemic restrictions).
“In the second quarter we renewed our services and there hasn’t been a great momentum as a whole. Also, we didn’t make aggressive promotions during the second quarter,” Totoki said. “More people are going outdoors, and we have yet to get out of the negative cycles.”
Sony released a statement claiming that the decrease in PS Plus subscription numbers was influenced by a “greater decline in user engagement among PlayStation 4 (PS4) users than expected.” Totoki also mentioned that the sale of PS4 and third-party games slowed down.
Meanwhile, Sony has sold 25 million PS5 consoles overall. It managed to sell 3.3 million units in July and September, selling the same amount it did this time last year, when people were still having trouble acquiring the console due to supply chain shortages caused by the pandemic.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.