PlayStation Plus Premium: 2-hour demos for games will be imposed on developers

The new PlayStation Plus will arrive on June 22 (in Europe) with three formulas, including the Premium offer which will notably include demos in order to test the games before possibly buying them. But Sony decided to impose some rules.

Studios must create two-hour game demos

According to Game Developer, Sony announced to the studios marketing games with a minimum price of 34 dollars that they will have to offer a demo of at least two hours for their future games. These trial versions will be for the PlayStation Plus Premium subscription which will cost €16.99/month, €49.99/quarter and €119.99/year.

Many studios received this information via an update to Sony’s Developer Portal and would not have received prior communication about this change. This new policy does not apply retroactively or at all to PlayStation VR games. However, developers planning to release PlayStation games in the future will need to comply with these new guidelines.

Studios would have up to three months after the release of their games to set up a trial version, which would have to be available on PlayStation’s subscription service for at least 12 months.

On June 22, Sony will offer three plans for PlayStation Plus: Essential, Extra and Premium. The first (€8.99/month) is equivalent to the existing PlayStation Plus. The second (€13.99/month) will add a catalog of around 400 of the best PS4 and PS5 games. And the third will add approximately 340 additional games, access via streaming in the cloud to PlayStation, PS2, PSP and PS4 games, and therefore the famous game demos. This new PlayStation Plus comes in a way to compete with Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass.