Last week, we published a light-hearted story about a PS Plus user who stacked Premium subscription for nearly a quarter of a century. It surprisingly became our most popular article (as well as the most popular post in the PS Plus subreddit) last week.
The Reddit user in question, On_Reddit_In_Class (abbreviated to ORIC henceforth) reached out to me to clarify a few things, and an interesting coversation followed. I decided to turn our conversation into a short interview because some of their responses are quite intriguing, like how they slowly stacked up to 2048, and don’t think Premium is the best value for money.
How to stack PS Plus without breaking bank: A brief chat with a long-time member
The answers below have been edited for clarity only where necessary, and the user’s identity has been protected upon their request.
PlayStation LifeStyle (PSLS): How did you go about stacking up until 2048, and how much did it actually cost?
ORIC: The total damage was about $1,400 (editor’s note: this is a saving of over $1,000 because the user stacked Essential and converted to Premium with an upgrade cap). If you look through my post, you’ll see that I actually buy and sell games a lot, including on other marketplaces. I was able to pay for all of this with discounted gift cards — some from places like Costco that were 10% off, and others from people that I met from selling games that wanted to trade or get rid of their cards.
PSLS: Are there any money-saving tips you’d like to share?
ORIC: If you can, buy everything with discounted gift cards. You can easily find gift cards that are at least 10% off at Costco; steeper discounts can be found if you’re willing to look. I think Eneba just had PSN cards that were 17% off with a discount code. But I think my most important tip is to be patient and wait for sales. Let’s be real: a lot of us have enormous backlogs and probably don’t need that new $70 game right at launch.
PSLS: It was recently revealed that Premium is proving to be more popular than Extra and Essential. What drew you to Premium?
ORIC: I actually never had Premium before I decided to stack. I just didn’t think it was a compelling value over Extra. But I figured that the additional $63 to upgrade to Premium instead of Extra is pretty small spread out over 24 years, so if I play a few games on the Classics catalogue or use Game Trials, I’ll more than get my money’s worth.
PSLS: Premium has often been criticized for not offering enough value for money. That’s obviously subjective. Looking back at your PS Plus usage, can you honestly say you get your money’s worth with Premium?
ORIC: Premium doesn’t offer a lot of value. Like I said in the previous question, I’ve never had Premium before. But since I could only convert once at an amazing value, I figured that an extra $63 spread out over 24 years would be more than worth it. Aside from the Classics catalogue, I’m looking forward to being able to access Game Trials. I know I’m not the only one that has bought a full-priced game they thought that they were going to like, especially one that was well-rated, only to realize that it was not for them.
PSLS: In your Reddit post, you cited regular price hikes as the reason for stacking up. But why 24 years rather than, say, 5-10 years?
ORIC: I’ve been gaming ever since I was a kid, with the exception of college when I was young and broke. It’s one of my main hobbies and I expect that I’ll be playing far into the future. It’s really timeless for me and something that I think that I’ll never get tired of. Stacking that far into the future, or any substantial amount really, is a risk. I chose 24 years because it would be far enough into the future that I would save a good bit of money, but not so far that I would be reasonably worried that I wouldn’t live that long, as morbid as that sounds. It was all very calculated and I put a lot of thought into it.
As for why I stacked so many years of PS Plus specifically, it’s because it’s going to be my main gaming platform going forward. I’m in a very fortunate position. I was able to also get an Xbox Series X this generation and although I wanted to love it, I just don’t think it’s a compelling value anymore with first-party [Xbox] exclusives going multi platform and Game Pass becoming really, really expensive. You can only stack 18 months now. I’m also not a PC gamer (nothing wrong with PC just not my preference), so spending the money on building a PC where there’s free online gaming just didn’t interest me.
PSLS: A surprising amount of people responded to you expressing skepticism that PS Plus will be around for that long. How do you respond to that?
ORIC: There’s a reason why everything now is a subscription — recurring revenue, especially revenue that’s sticky is very attractive for the bottom line. I don’t think everything needs to be or even should be a subscription, but unfortunately, I think they’re here to stay. So I expect that Sony will always have some kind of subscription. When they got rid of PS Now and moved to the current tiered subscription model, they moved everybody that was on Now to Premium. Hell, people were even trying to find PS Now at gas stations before the cards disappeared so they could convert to Premium for cheap. I think Sony will have to make users whole, anyone who thinks otherwise is really underestimating the backlash and how angry the gaming community can get.
PSLS: Are you a member of PS Stars? If yes, how many points did you rack up by stacking PS Plus alone?
ORIC: A little over 21,000 points.
PSLS: Sony recently announced that subscription payments will no longer be rewarded with PS Stars points. You’re not really going to be impacted by that change, but what do you think of the new terms & conditions?
ORIC: I think it’s misguided. They’ll increase their margins, but nickel-and-diming your customers is really naive in the long run. With games becoming increasingly multi-platform what matters is the brand, specifically how consumers feel about that brand. There’s a reason that Costco hasn’t gotten rid of their $5 rotisserie chicken or $1.50 hot dog combo — it’s because it makes the consumer comfortable with the brand and patroning their warehouses. Things like these pay dividends. People love PlayStation as a brand, it’s the reason why they were able to sell out $1,000 PS5 Pro [30th] anniversary bundles in seconds.
We’d like to thank ORIC for their time.