Sony Entertainment Online are on the verge of adopting a new subscription plan to replace those they’ve had in place individually for each of their games. For a fixed fee of $14.99, PC players would gain access to all of the MMO developers’ games.
“That’s a benefit most companies simply can’t offer because they don’t have our portfolio of games,” said CEO John Smedley.
In a long post on Reddit, Smedley outlined the plan: “if you subscribe to one of our games you are a subscriber to all our games”.
The scheme would build on SOE’s current All Access deal, which offers subscriptions to several of its games for $14.99. Players would be allowed to pick an item in each game they played.
“Some of you might say, ‘Well who cares, I only play Planetside 2. How is that a benefit to me?’,” said Smedley. “My answer is simple – we’ve got a great lineup of games, some of which aren’t announced yet that cater to a lot of players.”
Smedley specifically namechecked EverQuest Next and EverQuest Next Landmark – the upcoming MMO and its Minecraft-influenced creative mode counterpart – as part of the potential scheme.
The subscription plan might take a tad longer to implement in Europe, where SOE work with other companies like ProSiebenSat.1 to run local operations for Planetside 2, EverQuest and DC Universe Online.
“We need to discuss with our partners,” wrote Smedley. “We have a pretty good idea on this though. Give us a bit of time to suss this out.”
If the plan goes ahead existing subscribers will be offered refunds and a new three, six or 12 month option will become available. And it’ll be PC only.
“We can’t do the same kind of promotions as easily on the PS3 and PS4,” Smedley admitted. “We’re a lot more limited because we can’t use [SOE currency] Station Cash on there. So when we have a 3x sale on SC we have to do something different for our console titles. It’s a pain in the neck to deal with this.”
It’s worth noting that some of the more appealing corners of SOE’s portfolio – namely Planetside 2 and EverQuest – have long been free-to-play. Are the other assorted highlights of its back catalogue worth paying for, do you reckon?
Thanks, Eurogamer.