Much ado has been made about the hits dropping on Xbox Game this year. After billions of dollars spent on numerous acquisitions – and more spent fighting for those acquisitions in court – Microsoft has indeed started to see its first-party investments pay off this year with titles like Avowed, South of Midnight and DOOM: The Dark Ages. It’s made some smart third-party choices with Game , as well, bringing releases like Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 into the fold on day one. When Metaphor: ReFantazio s the service on May 29, it’ll have secured yet another banger.

PlayStation Plus service was the better game subscription out of the two, even though it never got anywhere near the coverage, credit or praise of its Xbox competitor. And you know what? Despite this recent Xbox Game stretch, I actually still do.

Here’s why.

PlayStation Exclusives

Sony's First-Party Output Is Unmatched

Yes, Microsoft is dropping its first-party games into Xbox Game on day one. Yes, Sony’s refusal to do the same with its own titles on PlayStation Plus is a sticking point for some. But PlayStation’s much-heralded first-party exclusives do come to Plus eventually, and when you factor those into the equation, the release date discussion suddenly feels a whole lot less important. Sony has set a high bar for what it delivers through PlayStation Studios and even its lower-rated titles from the past decade are still decent games. In fact, they’re just as good one year, two years, or even a decade-plus later. Was Redfall worth playing immediately?

If you were to count up top-tier console exclusives from the past two generations, you’d find the PlayStation side has a pretty commanding lead. You can play through a grand total of five Uncharted games, each a bonafide hit. The Last Of Us Part 1 is here to remind fans of the games and the TV series of happier times (still a zombie apocalypse but still, somehow, happier times). There’s the stellar Ghost of Tsushima – something you might want to take a run through before Ghost of Yotei drops this fall. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart brings that fun platforming action we just don’t get enough of anymore. All these, plus: Bloodborne, God of War, God of War: Ragnarok, Returnal, Shadow of the Colossus, and more.

You’d be hard-pressed to find as many Microsoft-published games that can match the above in of accolades, and that’s not even counting the third-party console exclusives like Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. Things are trending better in the Xbox camp, but Microsoft isn’t exactly big on exclusivity anymore, either, which is another thing to consider. You can subscribe to PlayStation Plus for all of Sony’s hits, yet still purchase Xbox Studios titles like Forza Horizon 5, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and DOOM: The Dark Ages as they arrive on the platform. When deciding where to put your gaming dollars, that seems like the most prudent move.

Games From More Eras

PlayStation Plus Does The Classics Better

PlayStation Plus isn’t just a place to play some of Sony’s best PS4 and PS5 releases: it’s also a time capsule of sorts, capable of transporting you as far back as the mid ‘90s when the company had just started to stake its claim in console gaming. Some of you might not have been born when these games arrived on store shelves. Others might have been children or teens, eagerly ripping apart the wrapping paper to find Ape Escape safely nestled inside its jewel case. If you want a trip back to a time when life was simpler – when you were up late reading FAQs for Dino Crisis instead of emails – PlayStation Plus is the service that’ll punch your ticket.

PlayStation Plus, on the other hand, seems to revel in the PlayStation brand’s history.

Xbox Game , to its credit, does have a decent number of titles from the Xbox 360 generation. These are almost exclusively Microsoft-published titles and a good amount come courtesy of Rare Replay. There are some goodies here: the Fable trilogy and games from the Gears of War franchise, for example. And, of course, you can play all of those remastered Halo masterpieces as past of The Master Chief Collection. Unfortunately, this particular service doesn’t seem as interested in original Xbox games and can’t go back any further than that because, well, the Xbox existed within the same generation as the PlayStation 2. Microsoft’s console gaming heritage can’t quite stand toe-to-toe with Sony’s.

PlayStation Plus, on the other hand, seems to revel in the PlayStation brand’s history. You can roll into the original PSone’s Twisted Metal, follow that up by sneaking your way through the underappreciated Sly Cooper trilogy from the PlayStation 2, then finish off your journey by ripping through inFAMOUS from the PlayStation 3. All in all, you’ll find hits from five total generations of PlayStation consoles on PS Plus, as well as some games from Sony’s portables that eventually received ports. It’s that focus on the classics, however, that Xbox Game can't match.

More Variety & More Games Overall

You Stand A Much Better Chance Of Finding Something To Play On PS Plus

Xbox Game has a pretty tight grip on sports due to Microsoft’s partnership with EA. EA Play has American football covered at both the pro and collegiate levels with Madden and NCAA, respectively, as well as what the rest of the world calls football with FC. Outside of that genre, though, I’d argue PlayStation Plus does a much better job mixing things up.

If it’s RPGs you want, PlayStation Plus has you covered. As mentioned with Remake, the only service you’ll be playing a Final Fantasy game on right now is PlayStation Plus, with Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion also part of the service. Soul Hackers 2 calls PS Plus home, as do numerous Sword Art Online titles and western RPGs like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. These, plus numerous other releases from Playstation days gone by.

For straight-up action and adventure, you’ll find big-name titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Death Stranding Director’s Cut, Control: Ultimate Edition and three different Wolfenstein games. And if you find it curious that I’ve mentioned Skyrim and Wolfenstein already, it’s because – likely to some pre-existing deal – a number of Bethesda-published releases are available through PlayStation Plus. Those mentioned above, plus Fallout 4, Fallout 76, RAGE 2 and more. Xbox Game strangely can’t even call these subscription-exclusives.

For horror aficionados, the original Until Dawn is part of the library, as is every Dark Pictures Anthology game that’s been released thus far. We’re a ways off from Halloween, but you can certainly pay to be scared out of your wits with PlayStation Plus if that’s what you’re into.

When you’re trying to keep the kids busy, you’ll find more LEGO games than you probably knew existed, along with some goofier titles like Golf With Your Friends and Untitled Goose Game.

And it’s not entirely true that Sony’s service sleeps on day-one releases. Beloved titles like Stray have come to PS Plus on their release date in the past. More recently, as well, the exquisite Blue Prince was a release date drop on the subscription, as was narrative-driven adventure game Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Sony is certainly more choosy about striking these deals, but it does happen from time to time and the company’s track record has been pretty good.

This brings us to sheer library size. Counting its Game Catalog, titles made available through Ubisoft+ Classics, and its own Classics catalog, PlayStation Plus boasts an impressive 600 total games. If you’re subscribing to Xbox Game Ultimate, that number crunches to 484. Not only is Sony’s library the one I think you’re more likely to find variety in, it’s the larger one with more titles included, period.

Pound For Pound, I Think PlayStation Plus Is The Better Service

For Me, It Checks The Most Boxes

As a subscriber to both Xbox Game and PlayStation Plus, I’ve never quite understood why Sony’s take on the subscription isn’t typically mentioned in the same breath as Microsoft’s. In of who brought the concept to the forefront, you can make a case either way – though I’d mention that PlayStation Now, which started out streaming-only, existed several years before Xbox Game but had the same basic idea: pay money to access a catalog of games.

Sure, day one releases are cool to get on Microsoft’s service. Now that it’s getting consistent production out of its many studios, that’ll make it worth a look. And if Microsoft continues to wisely lock down day one drops from third parties, that too will be a boon. But its perceived value is tied to this string of wins continuing, which will be a difficult goal to achieve. The service has experienced lulls in the past and most top titles don't stick around forever. It’s more likely we hit a point where Xbox Game might not feel as worth it again.

PlayStation Plus meanwhile, has been fairly solid throughout its existence. It may not always have the newest games, but it has a lot of games, and a lot of good ones, at that. Sony’s done a commendable job shuffling the catalog’s various time periods and genres to cover a wide gamut of video game history and tastes, and has a varied back catalog of its own exclusives – again, almost every one of them well-received – to boost the “” factor.

I consider myself way more of an Xbox gamer than I do a PlayStation gamer. That’s been the case since 2001 when I first got my mitts on Halo: Combat Evolved. I’ve owned every Xbox console since, dove headfirst into Xbox Game when it arrived in 2017 and have even become a bit of a PC handheld wonk due mostly to Xbox Play Anywhere. Trust me – I’m in it.

That doesn’t change the fact that, for my money, I’ve gotten more fun and satisfaction out of my PlayStation Plus subscription thus far. Where Xbox Game has occasionally grabbed me with a new game, with PlayStation Plus, I feel like there’s always something interesting I can find to play. It’ll take a much longer “hot streak” to convince me otherwise.