The full list of PS Plus Premium games is now available to view on the official PlayStation website, and there’s plenty of retro goodness to indulge in if you’re willing to pay a bit more each month for the Premium tier.
We were treated to the first batch of PS Plus Premium titles not too long ago. However, it was just a selection of what we can expect when the subscription service relaunches towards the end of June (dates and times of the relaunch vary by region, with the service already live in Japan).
Now, though, what appears to be the full list of games coming to PS Plus Premium has appeared on the official US PlayStation website (opens in new tab). It’s quite a robust, eclectic mix of games, too, featuring a rather large helping of retro games from the PS1, PS2 and PSP libraries.
Standout titles in the list include Demon’s Souls, Returnal and Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut for PS5, alongside old-school favorites like Ape Escape, Everybody’s Golf, and Wild Arms 3.
A solid start, but we have concerns
We can’t be upset with the wide range of games the PS Plus Premium tier is offering at the cost of a monthly sub. A myriad of genres are covered, and there looks to be plenty of nostalgia to mine from the inclusion of those older PS1 games, too.
And with more games being added to the service post-launch, we’re certainly excited to see just what kinds of games Sony can manage to add to its relaunched PS Plus service further down the line. Fondly remembered franchises like Metal Gear Solid and Ridge Racer immediately come to mind.
However, Sony may have a bit more work cut out for itself than it’s letting on. Early impressions of PS Plus Premium’s emulation of PS1 games has been mixed. A good portion of the games featured are the PAL versions, and thus only run at 50Hz. As such, there’s a noticeable impact on framerate not seen with the 60Hz NTSC versions of the same titles.
Additionally, for some games like Everybody’s Golf, a Digital Foundry analysis (opens in new tab) revealed that Sony has applied a frame blending technique to help smooth out the lower PAL version framerate. The issue here is that the technique leads to ghosting of the image, making camera movement appear much blurrier than on original hardware.
Still, the robust list of games is a promising start. We just hope that Sony takes on player feedback after the service has launched to improve emulation across the board.