Sony Kills the PS Plus PC App Because Only 0.4% Used It. Kiwis Never Even Got the Thing

Sony is killing the PlayStation Plus app on PC. From 10 December, PS Plus Premium members won’t be able to stream PlayStation games to a Windows PC any more, and Sony’s reason is brutally simple: hardly anyone was using it.

The news was tucked at the very bottom of a PlayStation Blog post about November’s Game Catalog, posted on Wednesday NZ time. Here in New Zealand and Australia, most of us won’t notice a thing, because we never got the streaming service in the first place.

What Sony actually said

Sony’s Adam Michel, senior director of content acquisition and operations, wrote the announcement. Here’s what it boils down to.

• The date: the PlayStation Plus app on PC retires from 10 December. Sony didn’t give a time.
• The reason: “less than 0.4%” of eligible PlayStation Plus Premium members were using the app, according to Sony.
• The official line: dropping it “allows us to focus on enhancing high-quality experiences that more of our members want to use”.
• What’s safe: Sony says the change “does not affect PlayStation Plus memberships or benefits available on PS5 and PS4 consoles”.
• Who gets told: Sony says it will notify affected users directly.

Kiwis and Aussies never had it anyway

The PC app streamed games from PlayStation Plus Premium’s cloud library. Premium doesn’t exist here, and when Sony revamped PS Plus in 2022, Australia and New Zealand got a top tier called PlayStation Plus Deluxe instead.

As TechRadar reported back then, Deluxe is basically Premium without the cloud streaming, because PlayStation Now never launched down here. Sony’s NZ and Australian PS Plus pages still list Deluxe’s perks today, and cloud streaming isn’t one of them.

So this is one PlayStation cutback that doesn’t actually take anything away from us. That’s grim, but at least it’s consistent.

Sony keeps backing away from PC

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The PC app shutting down fits a wider retreat from PC that’s been building all year.

• May: Bloomberg reported that PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst told staff Sony’s big story-driven games would stay on console, according to GamesRadar.
• September: former PlayStation studios boss Shuhei Yoshida suggested Sony could be going back to its “older ways” and focusing on the platform business, as GamesRadar reports.
• Now: the only official way to play PlayStation console games on a PC is gone. VGC points out that leaves cross-device streaming to Xbox, which streams its games and sells many on PC through Play Anywhere.

Where you can still stream PlayStation games

In the markets that have Premium, cloud streaming isn’t going away completely. Sony says console benefits aren’t affected, and The Verge notes Premium members can still stream on a console or a PlayStation Portal.

• PS5: Premium members can keep cloud streaming games on the console, according to The Verge.
• PlayStation Portal: Premium members can still stream to Sony’s handheld too, The Verge says.
• PC: nothing official from 10 December. Some PC owners are already piping a PS5 into their PC with capture cards, as we covered with the GTA 6 DLSS 5 crowd.

Our take

Fair enough on the numbers. If 99.6% of the people paying for a feature can’t be arsed opening it, you bin it, and nobody’s going to march on Sony HQ over the PS Plus PC app.

But spare us the “high-quality experiences” waffle. Sony spent a few years chasing PC money, quietly stopped porting its big games, and has now pulled the last official way to play PlayStation stuff on a PC. It’s a company retreating to the console, and it should just say so.

As for us Kiwis, we’ve been paying for a top PS Plus tier without cloud streaming since 2022, so you’ll forgive us for not crying over losing something we never had. It’s the same week Sony binned Fairgame$, too, so PlayStation’s having a tidy-up.

Did anyone actually use this thing? Come tell us in the GetRekt Discord. More PlayStation news lives on our PS5 page.

Sources

• PlayStation Blog: PlayStation Plus Game Catalog for November (includes the PC app announcement)
• The Verge: The PlayStation Plus PC app is shutting down next month
• PC Gamer: PlayStation Plus PC app is being shut down in December
• GamesRadar+: Sony’s PC presence shrinks again as PlayStation Plus app shuts down in December
• VGC: PlayStation announces end of PC streaming in December
• TechRadar: Australia’s revamped PS Plus will be different to the rest of the world
• PlayStation NZ: PlayStation Plus plans