Image: Push Square
Was PS Plus Essential worth paying for in 2025? Well, after crunching some data, we can reveal that your $79.99/£59.99 membership added over $1,500/£1,300 worth of PS5 and PS4 games to your catalogue this year.
It’s worth clarifying at this stage that these games are yours to keep, but only if you remain a member, so that’s an important caveat. We also ignored any pending or past discounts to reach our total, so many of these games could be purchased cheaper at certain points in the year.
But in terms of overall value, it’s an astounding proposition.
The full lineup of 39 games was as follows:
In terms of value, December’s five games were by far the best, topping $185/£155 in total, meaning that month alone represented almost three times the value of an annual subscription.
Meanwhile, October was the most acclaimed month overall, with Alan Wake 2’s 89 Metacritic rating and Cocoon’s 88 Metacritic rating pulling up the average pretty high.
Obviously, PS Plus Essential only represents one-third of Sony’s subscription picture these days, but due to the rotating nature of the content available with PS Plus Extra, we’ve opted to exclude that from our analysis.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that PS Plus still represents outstanding value, it just depends on personal taste as to how much you’re actually getting out of it.
What did you think of the service this year? Are you surprised by some of these statistics? Let us know below.
What are your thoughts on PS Plus Essential in 2025? (386 votes)
It was excellent25%It was good35%It was okay28%It was bad6%It was crap6%