Sony has finally announced its revision of its PlayStation Plus subscription service, effectively combining PS Plus and PS Now, alongside adding premium tiers that look likely to compete with Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass. There's a brand new three-tier structure to the service, Essential, Extra, and Premium.

The Extra tier will cost $14.99/month, and includes up to 400 PS5 and PS4 titles, while the Premium Tier will cost $17.99 a month and include all of those games, alongside an extra 340 additional games from PS3, PS2, original PlayStation, and PSP. The membership tiers will officially come into place starting in June, with a phased approach across Asia and North America, before making its way everywhere else.

How Much Does the All-new PlayStation Plus Cost?

We've included a detailed breakdown of the costs just below here, but putting it simply, if you want to remain on your basic PlayStation Plus subscription, you're looking at PS Plus Essential.

This costs $9.99 a month, and includes all the benefits you're already used to, including online multiplayer access, cloud game saves, monthly free games, and more. PS Plus Extra and Premium are what many will compare to the Xbox Game Pass model.

PlayStation Plus Essential

• United States: $9.99 monthly / $24.99 quarterly / $59.99 yearly
• Europe: €8,99 monthly / €24.99 quarterly / €59.99 yearly
• United Kingdom: £6.99 monthly / £19.99 quarterly / £49.99 yearly
• Japan: ¥850 monthly / ¥2150 quarterly / ¥5143 yearly

PlayStation Plus Extra

• United States: $14.99 monthly / $39.99 quarterly / $99.99 yearly
• Europe: €13.99 monthly / €39.99 quarterly / €99.99 yearly
• United Kingdom: £10.99 monthly / £31.99 quarterly / £83.99 yearly
• Japan: ¥1,300 monthly / ¥3,600 quarterly / ¥8,600 yearly

PlayStation Plus Premium

• United States: $17.99 monthly / $49.99 quarterly / $119.99 yearly
• Europe: €16.99 monthly / €49.99 quarterly / €119.99 yearly
• United Kingdom: £13.49 monthly / £39.99 quarterly / £99.99 yearly
• Japan: ¥1,550 monthly / ¥4,300 quarterly / ¥10,250 yearly

What Games Will Be on PS Plus Extra and Premium?

If you subscribe to the PS Plus Premium membership tier, you can expect around 700 games in total to be included with the subscription. Sony has stated at launch they're expecting to have games such as Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal.

Games from PS3, PS2, and original PlayStation era titles will also be available via cloud streaming and direct downloads, but this will definitely differ depending on what game you're trying to play.

What Happens to My Current PS Plus Subscription?

With PlayStation Now transitioning into the new PlayStation Plus service, Sony has stated PS Now "will no longer be available to buy standalone." Any current PS Now subscribers will have their membership converted to PS Plus Premium at no extra cost at launch.

There is no current word on how those who have stacked months or even years of PS Plus membership will be able to upgrade and convert their current time into Extra or Premium tiers. Moreover, what about those who have both PS Now and PS Plus? No clear answers yet, but Sony is expecting to reveal even more about the new PlayStation Plus very soon.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Sony has finally revealed its Xbox Game Pass competitor, an "all-new PlayStation Plus" that brings together the existing PS Plus and PS Now into a three-tier subscription service that includes up to 700 games and access to retro games at the top tier. It will open for some markets in June and roll out worldwide regionally after that.

After months of reports, and even longer being speculated about, Sony finally revealed the new service today. It consists of three tiers, PlayStation Plus Essential, PlayStation Plus Extra, and PlayStation Plus Premium. As part of the move, PS Now will be closed down, with members migrated to the Premium tier, with no change to prices at launch.

At its top tier, the new PS Plus will offer more than 700 games for streaming or download (including streaming on PC), and the library will be "regularly refreshed". PS3 games will be available as streaming-only titles, while PS1, PS2 and PSP games will come with download or streaming options. Sony has made clear that (at least for now) first-party exclusives will not be launched into the service for any tier, unlike Xbox Game Pass.

The service will launch with the likes of Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan told GamesIndustry there's a diverse line-up to come: "Whether it's indies, whether it's big games, or things that celebrate our heritage... all sorts of games. We are going to have all of it, and hopefully a line-up that ticks all sorts of boxes."

The new service will roll out regionally, beginning in "several markets in Asia" in June, followed by North America, Europe and the rest of the world. No specific dates have been offered as yet.

You can see full details and pricing for each tier below:

While Sony says it's looking to increase coverage for cloud streaming across the world, regions without access to it will instead get a different tier, Deluxe, which removes streaming (and thus all PS3 games) from the Premium tier, but comes in at a lower price. Deluxe will seemingly not be available outside of those regions.

While the new PS Plus bears similarities in approach to Game Pass, there are multiple differences – not least in how exclusives are handled. Xbox Game Pass has arguably been one of the most important decisions Microsoft has made about its gaming business in recent years, offering a rotating selection of games (including first-party titles on launch day) as part of a subscription, and tying in Cloud Gaming and other perks at the more expensive Ultimate tier. It's been an enormously popular move, and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer previously called a PlayStation response to Game Pass an "inevitability".

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Sony has finally revealed its Xbox Game Pass competitor, an 'all-new PlayStation Plus' that brings together the existing PS Plus and PS Now into a three-tier subscription service that includes up to 700 games and access to retro games at the top tier. It will open for some markets in June and roll out worldwide regionally after that.

After months of reports, and even longer being speculated about, Sony finally revealed the new service today, which is likely a response to Xbox's wildly popular Game Pass service. It consists of three tiers, PlayStation Plus Essential, PlayStation Plus Extra, and PlayStation Plus Premium. As part of the move, PS Now will be closed down, with members migrated to the Premium tier, with no change to prices at launch.

At its top tier, the new PS Plus will offer more than 700 games for streaming or download (including streaming on PC), and the library will be "regularly refreshed". Sony has made clear that first-party exclusives will not be added to the service at launch, unlike Xbox Game Pass.

The service will launch with the likes of Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal.

The new service will roll out regionally, beginning in "several markets in Asia" in June, followed by North America, Europe and the rest of the world. No specific dates have been offered as yet.

You can see full details and pricing for each tier below:

PlayStation Plus Essential

Essential is the same PlayStation Plus service that currently exists, with no changes to pricing. It includes Two monthly downloadable games, discounts, saved game cloud storage, and access to online multiplayer for most games.

PlayStation Plus Extra

The Extra tier includes all Essential benefits, and adds a catalog of around 400 PS4 and PS5 games that can be downloaded at any time. It includes first-party and third-party games (although earlier reports have said that exclusives will not launch into the catalog).

In the US, it will cost $14.99 monthly / $39.99 quarterly / $99.99 yearly, and in the UK it will cost £10.99 monthly / £31.99 quarterly / £83.99 yearly.

PlayStation Plus Premium

Premium includes all the Essential and Extra benefits as well, and adds 340 extra games for download, including streaming PS3 games, and PS1, PS2 and PSP games for streaming and download. Streaming can be carried out on PS4, PS5, and PC. Premium members will also receive time-limited trials of some games.

In the US, it will cost $17.99 monthly / $49.99 quarterly / $119.99 yearly, and in the UK it will cost £13.49 monthly / £39.99 quarterly / £99.99 yearly.

While Sony says it's looking to increase coverage for cloud streaming across the world, regions without access ot it will instead get a different tier, Deluxe, which removes streaming (and thus all PS3 games) from the Premium tier, but comes in at a lower price.

Xbox Game Pass has arguably been one of the most important decisions Microsoft has made about its gaming business in recent years, offering a rotating selection of games (including first-party titles on launch day) as part of a subscription, and tying in Cloud Gaming and other perks at the more expensive Ultimate tier. It's been an enormously popular move, and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer previously called a PlayStation response to Game Pass an "inevitability".

Breaking...

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Andrew Garfield is avoiding questions about The Amazing Spider-Man 3, because he knows no one will believe his answers about playing Peter Parker again.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 38-year-old former Spider-Man was asked whether he could give an update on his potential return.

“No update from me,” he said. “No one's going to believe anything I say ever again. That’s my problem.”

Of course, Garfield recently wowed Marvel fans as he returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home alongside current Spider-Man, Tom Holland, as well as original big-screen Spidey, Tobey Maguire.

His return was so well-received that it even caused ‘Amazing Spider-Man 3’ to trend on Twitter alongside the hashtag #MakeTASM3. Even Tom Holland supported the return of his Spider-Bro as he admitted he wants to see Garfield back for another Spider-Man movie.

“I would love to see The Amazing Spider-Man 3,” Holland said. “I think what was so wonderful was how Andrew was able to kind of make amends with the character and the studio, you know, to kind of win the general public back.”

Garfield originally starred as Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man alongside Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. He soon became a bit of a fan favorite, but his stint as the legendary web-slinger was cut short after the poor performance of its sequel.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 may have cemented his retirement, but Garfield thankfully returned in No Way Home due to the multiverse shenanigans of Doctor Strange.

Although it’s unclear what’s next for the multiverse, we are expecting even more crossovers with the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So, perhaps it’s not the last time we’ve seen Garfield’s Spidey – especially with the likes of Venom and Morbius out there. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Andrew Garfield is avoiding questions about The Amazing Spider-Man 3, because he knows no one will believe his answers about playing Peter Parker again.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 38-year-old former Spider-Man was asked whether he could give an update on his potential return.

“No update from me,” he said. “No one's going to believe anything I say ever again. That’s my problem.”

Of course, Garfield recently wowed Marvel fans as he returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home alongside current Spider-Man, Tom Holland, as well as original big-screen Spidey, Tobey Maguire.

His return was so well-received that it even caused ‘Amazing Spider-Man 3’ to trend on Twitter alongside the hashtag #MakeTASM3. Even Tom Holland supported the return of his Spider-Bro as he admitted he wants to see Garfield back for another Spider-Man movie.

“I would love to see The Amazing Spider-Man 3,” Holland said. “I think what was so wonderful was how Andrew was able to kind of make amends with the character and the studio, you know, to kind of win the general public back.”

Garfield originally starred as Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man alongside Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. He soon became a bit of a fan favorite, but his stint as the legendary web-slinger was cut short after the poor performance of its sequel.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 may have cemented his retirement, but Garfield thankfully returned in No Way Home due to the multiverse shenanigans of Doctor Strange.

Although it’s unclear what’s next for the multiverse, we are expecting even more crossovers with the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So, perhaps it’s not the last time we’ve seen Garfield’s Spidey – especially with the likes of Venom and Morbius out there. But for now, we’ll have to wait and see.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Motorsport Games has today confirmed that rFactor 2 will become the official sim racing platform of Formula E, the world’s leading all-electric, open-wheel motorsport series. This partnership comes as an extension of the existing agreement between Motorsport Games and Formula E.

All 11 official teams and all 22 drivers and cars from the currently underway Formula E season are available for rFactor 2 on PC starting today. The platform now features every season of Formula E since 2018.

“Formula E is one of the fastest growing motorsports series and we couldn’t be more excited and honored to bring it to life fully within rFactor 2,” said Motorsport Games CEO Dmitry Kozko in a statement published alongside the announcement. “rFactor 2 continues to be the best-in-class simulation platform in the marketplace. This addition to its robust offering of motorsport series will greatly enhance the experience and offerings available to our players. With our expertise on creating authentic racing simulations and remarkable esports events coupled with Formula E’s surging popularity, we know that our partnership will reach every goal in place between our teams.”

Formula E will also be launching an esports series powered by rFactor 2’s in-game competitions platform. This comes in the wake of previous esports experience gleaned from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Formula E was one of several motorsports to temporarily pivot to esports as a replacement for real-world racing. The Formula E Race at Home Challenge was nine-week esports competition held in 2020 featuring all the teams and drivers of the 2019-20 Formula E season.

Motorsport Games has a number of ongoing partnerships with racing organisations, including NASCAR, BTCC, and an exclusive “long-term license” with IndyCar that should see a new game released in 2023.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

Crunchyroll caused a stir over the weekend when it announced that it will no longer be offering simulcast episodes on a free, ad-supported basis. Some users took that to mean that Crunchyroll, which was acquired by Funimation in August 2021, would become an entirely premium service. However, that’s not the case, Crunchyroll says.

Crunchyroll does plan to offer “seasonal samplers” for select simulcast shows debuting in the Spring 2022 season. The samplers will feature free, ad-supported releases of the first three episodes of each show, which will be available a week after their subscription-only premiere until May 31.

Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs (April 3)

Tomodachi Game (April 6)

The Greatest Demon Lord is Reborn as a Typical Nobody (April 6)

The Dawn of the Witch (April 8)

Spy x Family (April 9)

Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie (April 10)

A Couple of Cuckoos (April 24)

“Crunchyroll makes more than 1,000 hours available for viewers to sample free of charge through our ad-supported tier, and will continue to offer free content going forward,” Crunchyroll said in its blog post.

Earlier this month, Funimation was folded into Crunchyroll to create a new “anime super-service” with popular shows including My Hero Academia, Tokyo Ghoul, and Cowboy Bebop. Crunchyroll will be the main platform going forward, and will be the home to new anime debuting in Spring 2022.

For a guide on what to expect, check out IGN’s top 10 most anticipated new anime for 2022.

The Gotham City Police Department has seized The Riddler’s secret website.

If you’ve been following along with The Batman's promotional tour, you’ll know the team launched an ARG website www.rataalada.com to give various updates on The Batman. This site was used to announce a new Riddler comic book written by Paul Dano, and more explosively, reveal a deleted scene from the movie with the Joker.

Now, however, GCPD has seized the domain meaning the Riddler’s posts might be slowing for now. But with a Gotham City spinoff show in the works at HBO Max, this might not be the last we see from the URL.

The official Batman Twitter account announced rataalada’s latest update in a tweet writing, “Must all games come to an end <?>” which could mean the end of Riddler’s updates. But the question mark at the end leaves this space potentially open for new announcements later on, possibly related to the upcoming Gotham City spinoff.

HBO appears to have full confidence in Matt Reeves’ version of Gotham City and has already announced two spinoff series. One will star Colin Farrell’s Penguin, the other was announced as a Gotham City PD show, but will now focus on Arkham Asylum.

Reeves is focusing on these two spinoffs, especially the Arkham Asylum series which could potentially include Barry Keoghan’s Joker. The series was originally announced as a GCPD show, following the police who serve Gotham City. But director Matt Reeves later said the show "evolved" into a series focused on Arkham Asylum. Rather than a police procedural, this series is now more like "a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham."

Check out IGN’s review of The Batman here.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

In the wake of the initial announcement of Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart, one question was on everyone's minds: who was that very cool new lombax?

After months of internet theories and embarrassing people referring to her as just "Girl Ratchet" or similar, we finally learned her name was Rivet — an absolutely perfect name for an equal fighter to Ratchet from another dimension. But as it turns out, it wasn't an easy road for developer Insomniac to arrive at Rivet's incredible design, her place in Rift Apart, or even her excellent name itself.

In his GDC talk: "Lombax Lessons: A 'Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart' Design Postmortem," Insomniac lead designer Mark Stuart walked attendees through the story of Rivet's naming and design. Rivet was born from one of Rift Apart's design pillars, he said, which is that “Everyone's a Hero,” meaning the team had an opportunity to create a "strong, playable, female lead" alongside Ratchet.

They began work on Rivet early on under the code name "Ratchette," but quickly nixed it for being "too diminutive" and "reducing her existence to a gender-swapped Ratchet," he said.

And then, Stuart continued, things got even sillier.

"For a while we switched to her just being named Ratchet. After all, she and Ratchet are technically dimensional counterparts. Ratchet is a non-gendered name. This stuck for a while, but ultimately made every draft of the story very confusing. For example: 'Ratchet needs to rescue Clank from Ratchet, who doesn't trust Ratchet and has a long history battling Nefarious.' At a time where story treatments were being rapidly iterated on, it was hard to tell what dimension you were in, but also which Ratchet you were talking about."

Next, Stuart said, they switched to the codename Gadget. That was better, but it ultimately didn't sit right with team members who were kids in the 80s due to multiple other similar characters named Gadget from around that era (Inspector Gadget and Gadget from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers were given as examples in his slideshow).

Then in a weekly meeting where name ideas were being thrown around, someone pitched Rivet off the cuff and people immediately loved it. It fit perfectly as another tool like Ratchet, and it also called to mind an image of Rosie the Riveter. And so Rivet became canon.

Stuart then went on to share details about the early visual designs of Rivet. He took us through a number of interesting pieces of concept art (which artist Dave Guertin has also shared on his personal page), showing off how the Insomniac team explored different themes for the character. Early on, one they honed in on was the concept of the "survivalist beastmaster."

This version of Rivet would have leaned into her grudge against Nefarious, extending it to all machines to the point of a total rejection of machinery. Instead, Rivet would embrace nature, and would have the ability to tame three different mounts: a beetle, a flyer, and an Agorian beast.

Rivet's beast taming ability was ultimately rejected, though, in part because in this version of the game Ratchet was turning out to be much more fun to play. His regular toolkit let him do everything Rivet could do without the assistance of other creatures. But there's another reason they nixed the idea.

"We realized the nature-loving woman was a trope," Stuart said. "Think FernGully, Pocahontas, or Krystal from Star Fox. Moreover, constraining the theme of her weaponry stifled the creativity the franchise was known for. Ratchet's weapons can shift, cut, bomb, and transmute. Making her set exclusively nature-based put unnecessary constraints on us."

Ultimately the nature design did inspire a few of Rivet's final weapons, like Mr. Fungi, and some of the beast ideas were later recycled into Rift Apart's Speedle and Trudi, though Speedle lost an earlier concept ability where it had a large, glowing butt that would explode whenever it collided with something. Apparently, murdering your mounts didn't jive with the idea that "everyone's a hero".

Insomniac still struggled to find a good way to make Rivet distinct, though. They tried giving Rivet and Ratchet completely different ability sets, but that made it frustrating for playtesters, who would forget which lombax they were in control of at a given time and realize mid-jump they didn't have the abilities they thought they did. So Insomniac added the ability to swap between the two on the fly, but that was also confusing in action, and they were hard-pressed to create a lore explanation for where the other lombax went when they swapped out, or who was where during the cinematics.

"Faced with the knowledge that strongly differentiated playstyles were actively hurting the holistic experience, we were forced to reexamine how long we were going to play as each lombax," Stuart said. "Or to put it another way: is Rivet cake, or frosting? Is she what makes up the core of the game, like Ratchet, or is she a unique and enjoyable diversion in small doses throughout? After all, Clank has drastically different mechanics than Ratchet in most games, but we only play as him for [a small portion] of the game. Clank is generally considered to be delightful frosting. A lot of these problems go away if Rivet is only playable for small, focused sections of the game."

But to find an answer, Insomniac had only to look back to its design pillars, including "Everyone's a Hero." Insomniac had wanted from the beginning to include a strong, playable, female protagonist, and they wanted to make the best distinctively Ratchet & Clank game they could from start to finish. Put together, that meant no shortcuts with Rivet.

"Rivet needed to be pure cake like Ratchet," Stuart continued. "We wanted Rivet to be core gameplay. Her inclusion was meant to be inspirational representation and not a bonus mechanic. In fact, in the final product, she makes up about 50% of the playtime."

Which is how we got the Rivet we know today. Insomniac unified the two under the same pool of weapons and abilities, then differentiated them in other ways, such as personality, appearance, animations, and obviously the story. And we're glad they landed on the Rivet we know and love, as you can tell from our launch review of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and its place as one of our favorite games of 2021.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Blizzard has clarified that the launch date listed for Diablo Immortal on iOS and iPadOS is only a placeholder and that an official date will be announced in the future.

The company opened iOS and iPadOS pre-orders for Diablo Immortal today, as well as pre-registration for Android users, with a listed release date of June 30. Placeholder dates are common for upcoming games, but they can often provide a bit of confusion, thus Blizzard has sought to clear things up.

"As a point of clarification for anyone who pre-registers on iOS and iPadOS, players will notice that the game is listed with a launch date of June 30," Blizzard told IGN in a statement. "We want to make it clear that June 30 is not the official launch date of Diablo Immortal, and this is just a placeholder for the time being as we lock in our final plans. We will update the community with our official launch timing at a later date."

In addition to opening pre-orders, Blizzard also shared that Diablo Immortal will feature an option for users to change their class without having to start new characters. By visiting Westmarch, players can select a new class and fresh visuals for their character without losing any of the progress made with previous classes.

The ability to change classes with relative ease appears to function similarly to Final Fantasy 14's job system, which allows players to move effortlessly between different styles of play without any notable downsides. This type of functionality effectively removes the need for alt characters, granting users the freedom to remain invested in a single character regardless of what role they wish to play.

We went hands-on with Diablo Immortal's closed beta, as well as its closed alpha last year and had mixed feelings. Though it's a fun romp with the series' iconic setting and slick gameplay, we found that some of its convoluted free-to-play mobile elements brought the experience down.

Hopefully, some of these issues will be ironed out in the final release, which is planned for sometime in 2022.

Billy Givens is a freelance writer at IGN.