Sure, if you want to enjoy a number of perks on the PS4 (like being able to play online on a number of multiplayer titles), you might want to shell out some money for a PlayStation Plus account. But what if you don’t wanna? What exactly can you do without a paid account?
Glad you asked. Here’s a list of things you can do without a PlayStation Plus account on the PS4 according to Sony:
- Accessing entertainment, film, and TV services (Users must subscribe separately to individual services)
- Share options, including sending gameplay video and screenshots to Facebook, screenshots to Twitter, or livestreaming gameplay via Ustream or Twitch
- Sharing video to Facebook,
- Playing PS4 games remotely using the PS Vita system (Remote Play)
- Comparing Trophy data with other users
- Sending and receiving text messages from other users
- PlayStation Store access (users must pay to purchase premium content)
- Live item, activity feeds on Dynamic Menu
- Party (cross game voice chat)
- Web browser
- PlayStation App services (on iOS/Android devices)
And here’s what you can enjoy if you do shell out the cash, for comparison’s sake:
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Online Multiplayer
Enjoy multiplayer competitive and cooperatives games via the internet.
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Instant Game Collection
Access to a regular, curated selection of titles made exclusively available to PlayStation Plus members at no additional cost. The PS4 titles available on Instant Game Collection at PS4′s launch in North America will include Resogun and Contrast.
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Discounts
Members will have access to exclusive discounts on PlayStation Store.
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Online Game Save
Members may automatically (or manually) upload game save files to Online Game Save Storage for safekeeping. Up to 1GB of cloud storage will be allocated to your PS4 save files.
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Other benefits
Early access to exclusive game content, automatic game patch downloads and installation, and more.
It’s worth noting that some free-to-play titles will allow you to play without a PlayStation Plus account. Additionally, if someone in a PS4 owning household is a PlayStation Plus member, everyone in the house can access online multiplayer — which is neat! And in case you’re curious, if you have a PS Plus membership on the PS3, it’ll still be valid on the PS4.
What do you think? Will you be purchasing a PlayStation Plus account?
Comments
40 responses to “What You Can Do Without A Paid PlayStation Plus Account On The PS4”
pretty cool that your ps3 sub carries over 🙂
LOL
“Cross game voice chat”
The Xbox360 has been doing that since 2006 and tbh that is one of the defining features of console gaming in many opinions
Good work kekeSony only took you almost 7 yrs to do it
If you like Xbox, play Xbox.
Why does what Sony are doing bother you if you play on a Microsoft system?
You know what else? You needed a gold subscription to do that, where as the PS4 isn’t a brick without a subscription.
The single subscription per house for online multiplayer is a great saver for families with siblings or where the whole family games.
what are you talking about, If someone else tries to play online multiplayer Sony wants them to buy the PS+ membership!! this is total BS!!
You need to set it as your primary console to share the subscription…. Learn to read please.
I probably wouldn’t get it, but I think it’s a very good deal.
Instant Game Collection (aka Instant Pile Of Shame) is quite possibly the single greatest thing done by any console manufacturer in this current generation. So good. So very, very good. Really glad to see it’s on PS4 from day 1 – I just hope that the quality / quantity of stuff offered doesn’t slide now that everybody will need PS+ for online play.
Instant pile of shame indeed :(. I feel your pain.
Pile of shame indeed, and some of us are dumb enough to have double the pile by having an Aus and US PS+ account.
For those not familiar with how big the potential pile of shame can be, see my list of all “free” PS+ games since he Instant Pile came into existence.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmRRDLosxQLIdGJmcVJudmxhSzhsb1hkX19ZRWMxS0E#gid=0
Wow, that’s almost as big as my Steam pile of shame :P, all in all have about 40 or so free titles from PS+
Agreed, PS+ is awesome value for money. XBox Live Gold and their “Games For Gold” offerings on the other hand are just pathetic.
For example this month on PS+ they have Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Remember me and Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath.
What does XBox have right now, Halo 3. Great effort Micro$oft.
Dude, tell me about it. They’ve taken a step in the right direction, but hopefully with Sony outclassing them, Microsoft will try to catch up and offer titles of similar quality. Right now they’d say ‘hey, but at least with our scheme you own the games outright, for life, even if you don’t have gold’ but pffft, it still doesn’t compare to the quality of games PS+ offers. They’ve had a few good games (crackdown, Dead Rising 2 + DLC) and it’s a step in the right direction, but they need to pick up their game.
Yep, competition is good for everybody.
The whole “own as long as you subscribe vs own for life” thing doesn’t really bother me. It did when PS+ first started, and put me off taking it up for a while because of that. But then I figured that if you subscribe for a year, you’ll have access to every game for an average of 6 months. How many games are you usually still playing after 6 months? Generally I play them, finish in a couple of weeks and move on to the next one. And secondly – given the insanely good value on offer, why would you let your subscription lapse anyway? If you were short on cash, then PS+ is probably the best investment you can make because it’ll keep you in a solid supply of games for a whole year for less than the cost of 1 new release game.
A lapsing subscription isn’t the end of your collection either, you can always resubscribe and have all your downloads activate once again.
The thing with not owning the games for a lifetime on PS+ is that if I wanted to own the game forever I would have bought it when it was released, or shortly after. For less than $5 a month though, I can play a heap of games I would have otherwise skipped or eventually bought from the bargain bin – or rented from the video shop for about $4 for one week. PS+ is amazing value even if you don’t keep the games when your subscription ends.
Plus when something comes along that I already bought on disc, I can just grab the downloadable version of it and trade the disc in next time I buy a new game. Do that a few times and it offsets a large chunk of the cost of the PS+ subscription.
I don’t even think about the price of gold anyway. $60/year is the cheapest service I pay for. I pay $90/month for my phone and I don’t use it as much as I do XBL. If a service is worth it (and it looks like Playstation online gaming is catching up to the quality of XBL) then $60-$80 a year is a pittance. And the good thing is, both PS4 and XBone only require one subscription/machine for everyone to use it. Like @braaains said, competition …
I just signed up last month and got Metal Gear Rising this month. I was pretty shocked, that’s still a fairly newish game. Happy as hell, though. Always wanted to play it.
And Remember Me, that’s a lot newer than Rising is.
I grabbed a PS+ subscription about a month ago with my new super slim and the sheer value is ridiculous. For $70, I get 14 months along with XCOM, Far Cry 3, Uncharted 3, Metal Gear Revengeance, Remember Me, and a slew of Vita games like Uncharted, Gravity Rush, and the Jak and Daxter HD trilogy. I don’t even have a Vita but they’ll be waiting for me if I buy one.
I bought a vita from EB games here in NZ, the offer had a free copy of Killzone which didn’t interest me much at all (I know, sacrilege) so I traded it in for a 32GB memory card and literally filled it with fantastic free games to the value of about $450 retail.
As an Ex-box gamer who used to pay for gold, this kind of value feels like I’ve just escaped from an abusive relationship.
if i have PSN plus for ps3 am i able to just keep purchasing PSN+ PS4 instant game collection games so that way in a years time when i pick up a PS4 i will have a decent library waiting for me???
Why anyone would pay for that poor excuse of an online service is beyond me
Pretty sure you can. I did that with the Vita for ages, until I got to the point where I had too many Vita games to not cave in and buy the device so I could play them 😛
PS4 will be the same – although if you don’t actually have a PS4 then I think you’ll probably have to purchase them through the web browser or smartphone app (i.e. I don’t know if they’ll actually be visible from the store if viewed through a PS3 or Vita).
If you are not already doing it all through the web store you are doing it wrong.
It is so much easier, lets see what they do with the PS4 layout, and the app versions.
What shits me to tears is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be ANYWHERE that I can view my PSN download list with the ability to sort and filter it. I’ve been downloading stuff off PSN for 6 years now, the list is HUGE, but it only seems to display newest to oldest. It would be REALLY nice if I could search / filter / sort it .
Totally agree. I’ve changed hard drives twice on my ps3 and both times I’ve had to download everything again. It would be so much easier to search for the games I wanted to re-download instead of scrolling one by one
Yeah, it seems to be completely random, there is no logic to the order it decides to show you the minute you re looking at it.
Is it World PlayStation day today or something?
They made a massive announcement last night. This is a gaming blog after all. Not much else happened.
Somebody didn’t get an invitation #worldpsday
Pssh dint even want one.
No question – my PS+ account stays active and totally awesome for PS4. I would have thought the caliber of Plus games will only get higher, as it’s now mandatory for most multiplayer services. I’m a big fan of the scheme and am looking forward to seeing where Sony go with it.
Seems pretty good value all things considered if you are going to be playing often. I’ll sign up when I get my grubby mits on my PS4.
Not sure if I missed something or if its old news, but we can’t play online/multiplayer without paying for PS+??
Paid $140 over 2 years, probably downloaded a good $400 worth of games via my PS3 and PSVita. Well worth the money.
So you have to pay for online now?
Pfffffft
Unless I’m misreading this, you need a PS+ subscription to get game patches?
What the hell?
Yep, you misread. It’s the same system as PS3 where everyone gets game patches but only PS+ subscribers can have the machine do it automatically when it’s idle.
You’re misreading it. It’s AUTOMATIC patch downloads that are PS+. You can set your PS3 (and PS4) to turn itself on at a set time each day (mine goes at 3am), it’ll download any patches for games you own and any firmware updates, etc. If you don’t have PS+ then the patches need to be downloaded next time you want to play the game. Although I thought they said they were moving the automatic updates out of PS+ so everybody could use it…
Ah, that makes more sense.
I was surprised by some of the things you can’t do on PS4 (mainly the no media streaming bit), and after reading this, I thought maybe Sony had lost their minds.
Oh and I think I was kind-of correct with what I said above… the most recent PS3 firmware update made auto download of firmware updates and patches available to all users, not just PS+.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_system_software
Seems odd they’d do that but make it require PS+ for PS4 owners, so I’ll assume that’s not going to require PS+ unless somebody can confirm otherwise after the console is actually released.
This Article is null and void unless Sony has changed and when was it done? their business tactics as far as I know to play online Multiplayer on the network was free.
http://au.playstation.com/psn/#select-tab-psnfeatures