Last week at E3 people learned of an upcoming change to Sony’s PS Plus subscription that many folks were slightly upset with, when it was reveled that PS Plus would be needed for most online multiplayer games. However it was revealed earlier this week that that won’t be the only change involving the service and its features. And I’m not going to lie, many of these changes are pretty good, even for a service as good already as PS Plus.
TV and online movies services, like Hulu and Netflix, will continue to be free for all PS4 users, but now auto-updating has been included in that list as well. That was a service previously available only to PS Plus members, but it appears that with the PS4 coming out later this year Sony wants to go ahead and make sure all consoles connected to the internet has this functionality. Other services that will not require a PS Plus membership include the PS4′s myriad of “social features”. It’s not quite known that Sony means by “social features”, but it’s being assumed that they’re referring to the controller’s Share button as well as the console’s broadcasting and upload capabilities.
At this point, however, Sony has not decided whether or not PS3 streaming through Gaikai will be for PS Plus members only. My hope would be that such streaming would be available to anybody with a PS4, regardless of PS Plus membership or not. Of course, I’ll freely admit that in the end it’s not going to matter too much because I’m likely to get myself a PS Plus membership whenever I pick up my PS4 in the first place.