Years ago in another life, for another website my primary role was PlayStation community editor. I used to love the PSN games you could get for under £15 like Pain, Fat Princess, High Velocity Bowling and Age of Booty (just to name a few). Now every month feels like an endless precession of ‘meh’ with the free PSPlus games selection. Every month I see the offers from Humble Choice, Game Pass or Prime compared to what Sony has to offer and my die hard console fan girl dies inside just a little more.

This month, is still meh.

Persona 5 Strikers
Okay this is one of the better offerings for a while. Less than two years old and currently going for £54.99, if this is game you have wanted I can see why some fans feel a bit… happier with this month than previous but its still a relatively ‘old’ offering. But its yet another game I have zero interest in. Maybe its me, maybe I really am done with console gaming. But so many titles that are free each month just seem like the same samey bullcrap.

Dirt 5
Does anyone even play racing games more? I remember back fondly to PSone and Mobil 1 Rally Championship or Gran Turismo 2 – they felt like worth while grinds, now all driving games feel exactly the same. Yeah its another £54.99 game for free but why should the BASIC price for non-physical copies on consoles be so fucking high to begin with? Its like “hey look at this great deal you’re getting”. You know how much Dirt 5 is on Steam right now? £13.49 AND ITS FREE on EA Play. At least its less than two years old… I guess.

Deep Rock Galactic
This has been out on PC since May 2020, but has finally “launched” on PS4/5. Yay… so its new, right? Kinda, nope. Its also priced as £24.99 out of the gate on PS but currently on Steam for half that. I get that a lot of console players will have probably been waiting for this, but again this is hardly rewarding you for the cost of a PSN sub is it? I will admit this game does look fun, so I might actually give it a go but unless you have friends to play it with… will it be any good? Reviews on Steam suggest it becomes really grindy really fast so I don’t see this maintaining popularity.

This is the first month I have directly compared PSN offerings to PC ones, and all I can think about is the cost comparisons.
If you were to save up enough money to buy a PS5 bundle with a second controller you’re looking at what nearly £600? add two years of PSN to this and you have another £88 (assuming you pick the cheapest way to buy it) so that’s nearly £700. You can get a BASIC gaming PC for £719 right now from Scan – which then opens you up to all the free games on Steam, Origin & Epic.

With PS5’s still hard to come buy and continually shitty monthly offerings – unless the soon to launch PSPlus and PSNow mashup can really pull something out of its arse, maybe PlayStation has had its day?
And it pains me to say that as I have had PlayStation’s for over 20 years.