PlayStation Plus Premium release date: Sony PS Plus relaunch June 13

Both the PS Plus Premium and PS Plus Extra release date is June 13, with normal subscriptions converting to PS Plus Essential

Update: The PlayStation Plus Premium release date was June 13, 2022. Sony has revealed the full PlayStation Plus Premium games list – and we’ve added all the new releases that have been announced since.

PS Plus Premium will give anyone who got a recent PS5 restock a new way to play Sony’s best PS5 games in one of three tiers, including PlayStation Plus Extra and PlayStation Plus Essential.

• PlayStation Plus Essential – $59.99/yr

• PlayStation Plus Extra – $99.99/yr

• PlayStation Plus Premium – $119.99/yr

What’s the difference?

PlayStation Plus Essential will continue to offer online multiplayer and at least two PS Plus free games per month (usually it’s three or four freebies)

PlayStation Plus Extra, for double the price, adds 400 PS5 and PS4 games that can be downloaded. Sony offered insight into the PlayStation Plus Premium games list – but not the full list. Some PS4 games are remastered versions of PS2, PS3 and PSP/Vita era games, so you’ll be able to play games like Dark Cloud and Ape Escape 2 on this PS Plus tier.

PlayStation Plus Premium, for $20 more than Extra, adds 340 games, including PS3 games through cloud streaming (for technical reasons) and original PlayStation, PS2 and PSP games.

Also, PlayStation Plus Premium comes with time-limited game trials so you can try out select games before you buy them (or realize you don’t want to buy them).

Sadly, unlike Xbox Game Pass, there are no Day 1 releases for first-party games. Xbox Game Pass subscribers got Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 at launch; Sony subscribers will still be paying $70 for God of War Ragnarök when it releases, and recent games like Gran Turismo 7 and Horizon Forbidden West, which aren’t part of the list.

Matt Swider’s expert PS Plus analysis

PlayStation Plus Essential is worth $45 – but a harder ask at $60 – if you either play games online (it’s required for online multiplayer) or make use of the PlayStation Plus free games. We’ve cast our verdict on Sony’s new service in our PlayStation Plus Premium review and believe you’re best going with Extra or Essential for now.

With the PS Plus ‘free games,’ Sony offers 3-4 games per month that you can add to your library and continue to play as long as you’re a PS Plus subscriber, even after the given month. But you can’t go back in time and add these games to your library after the month expires. With PS Plus, Sony rules in favor of the age-old court case Snooze vs. Lose. You can only get the new ones introduced the following month.

I wish I started subscribing to PS Plus sooner, so I could bank three times as many games as I have now in my PS Plus library. They’re not all winners, but for $45 for a year of PS Plus? That’s a no-brainer deal.

Updated: August 16, 2022