PS Plus Essential Is Ditching PS4 Games, January 2026 – WGB

2026 is quickly approaching like a cruise missile over the horizon, and with it comes an essential reminder: PS4 video games will not be included within the month-to-month PlayStation Plus Important freebies.

Okay, earlier than we go any additional, let me dispel any fears: PS4 video games will not be being faraway from PlayStation or something insane like that. And there’ll nonetheless be PS4 titles within the sport catalogue which is offered on the costlier PlayStation Plus Additional tier.

However what is occurring is that starting in January 2026, the “free” video games that PlayStation offers out each month to everybody who has PlayStation Plus Important will not have PS4 titles – it’ll be PS5 video games solely. So if in case you have a PS4 and have been subscribed to the bottom tier purely for the month-to-month video games, it is likely to be time to ditch it utterly and even transfer as much as the following tier.

In equity to PlayStation, this modification was truly announced at the beginning of 2025, giving us a complete yr to get used to the thought.

‘As a lot of our gamers are at the moment enjoying on PS5 and have shifted towards redeeming and accessing PS5 titles from the Month-to-month Video games and Recreation Catalog profit, PlayStation Plus can be evolving with this development and can give attention to providing PS5 titles by means of the Month-to-month Video games and Recreation Catalog profit beginning January 2026,” mentioned Sony on the time.

Thoughts you, regardless of what Sony says, there’s truly lots of people nonetheless on PS4. Back in May of 2024, for example, Sony’s own numbers showed that their monthly active consoles were evenly split between PS4 and PS5. Since then, Sony has stopped giving actual numbers, sadly. Their newest chart from June of this yr reveals 124m month-to-month customers, and it seems that the PS4 nonetheless makes up roughly a 3rd of them, in order that’s round 40m.

So, why the change? It’s truly onerous to say. With so many individuals on PS4, it’s clear that persons are much less inclined than ever to improve to the newest technology. However that’s additionally precisely why Sony is doing this: an try to push individuals onto PS5, though I extremely doubt this could actually drive anybody to the PS5 at this level.