PlayStation Plus has misplaced 1.9 million subscribers because it was relaunched as a extra critical Xbox Game Pass competitor.

The information comes straight from Sony’s newest fiscal report, with the console maker noting that “the variety of PlayStation Plus subscriber accounts on the finish of September decreased 4 p.c from the tip of June to 45.4 million accounts.”

The “all-new PlayStation Plus” was rolled out in June 2022 and sought to compete with Xbox Game Pass by providing three subscriptions tiers referred to as Essential, Extra, and Deluxe, with the costlier choices letting customers entry as much as 700 titles together with some first-party releases and basic choices.

Although the revamped service does not precisely mirror Xbox Game Pass – Microsoft’s service presents day one entry to all first-party titles, whereas Sony’s solely grants entry to pick out first-party content material with no ensures of launch day entry – it is clear Sony was making an attempt to carve itself a slice of the piping sizzling Netflix-of-games pie.

According to Sony’s personal numbers, nevertheless, the variety of PlayStation Plus subscribers truly fell to 45.4 million customers in Q2 FY22 from 47.3 million customers in Q1 FY22. The variety of month-to-month lively customers on PlayStation Plus additionally dropped to 102 million from 103 million throughout that point.

While some customers have seemingly chosen to bid farewell to PlayStation Plus for the reason that rebrand, it is value declaring that Network Services income has elevated regardless of that drop off, rising to 117 billion yen in Q2 FY22 from 106.5 billion yen in Q1 FY22. That uptick may point out that the upper priced premium tiers are offsetting the actual fact some customers are abandoning ship.

Analysing the state of affairs, Sony claimed the lower is the results of a “larger decline in consumer engagement amongst PlayStation 4 customers than anticipated,” suggesting the ageing last-generation console is in charge for the downturn, and never PlayStation Plus itself.

“The ratio of PS Plus subscribers amongst PlayStation 5 customers stays at a degree considerably greater than that of PS4,” added Sony. “We are placing much more effort into accelerating the penetration of PS5 {hardware} to get better this consumer engagement going ahead.”