Sony's Revamped PlayStation Plus is What Nintendo Switch Online Should Look Like

PlayStation Plus Extra will grant all of the benefits from the Essential tier, and access to a catalog of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games, including PlayStation Studios titles and third-party partners. Extra tier games are available for download to play. It's $14.99 a month.

Finally, PlayStation Plus Premium is the best value by far. It grants all the benefits from the premium tiers and access to up 340 additional games, from PlayStation to PS5, including PlayStation, PS2, PSP, and PS3 games. PS3 titles will be streamable, while the other classic titles will be downloadable and streamable using PS4, PS5, and PC platforms. There will also be time-limited game trials in this tier. You get all of this for $17.99 a month.

That means we'll likely see games like PaRappa the Rapper, Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter, Final Fantasy VII, or a smattering of other classics up for grabs to play with a subscription. Many of these have been made available via avenues like the PlayStation Classic, so it would make sense to see them here, too.

Sony won't be bringing its heavy-hitter titles to PlayStation Plus tiers on day one like Xbox chooses to, but it is making up for this decision by unlocking years' worth of its older content, which is in many ways priceless to some users.

This new set of tiers is, as many have pointed out, similar to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass subscription service. It's easy to see it that way, as the offerings are comparable. And in this way, we'll achieve some sort of parity with what both Xbox and PlayStation fans have access to via each console's subscription services, which is great news for players, especially those interested in playing older titles.

But Microsoft and Sony have long taken strides toward helping players access older content in each company's respective catalog while working to offer plenty of streaming options. So it's no surprise that PlayStation's new configuration is such a boon for those looking for retro games to play. Nintendo, on the other hand, seemingly went backward with the Switch's debut, doing away with the Virtual Console service for classic games and opting for Nintendo Switch Online instead.

But right now, if you were to want to play, say, the first English release of a game like Animal Crossing, which debuted on the GameCube, you'd have no way of doing so on the Nintendo Switch. You'd have to purchase a GameCube and go to town, or you'd have to emulate it if you owned the actual game itself. This is just an example, of course. But Animal Crossing is hardly the only game you'd have to do this with. Nintendo has never made it easy to access its slate of classic games, while Microsoft and Sony have been working little by little either by way of backward compatibility or access to their game libraries with every new iteration of online services.

The new PlayStation Plus tiers having combined with PlayStation Now were a great move for Sony and a gracious way to thank fans who have been clamoring for backward compatibility over the years. Now, at the very least, there's going to be a library upon which Sony can continue to expand with additional retro titles that make it easy to play the games that helped launch the PlayStation name into the stratosphere.