Having your game go "free" for PlayStation Plus subscribers is a decent way to get a marketing boost using catalog titles, long after their original release.
But lately, we've seen developers cut deals with Sony, launching brand new games for free on PlayStation's service.
Mercenary Kings is perhaps the most notable game going free at launch,
a move that its developer previously told us was "a safe bet."
Now, August sees both Digital Dreams'
Metrico and Spry Fox's
Road Not Taken going immediately free for PS Plus subscribers.
In these two cases, the studios were approached by Sony's PS Plus team about making the move, which indicates that there is active reachout happening, as Sony continues to build out its PS Plus portfolio in order to attract more subscribers. PS Plus memberships go for $50 a year.
"Sony proposed the PS Plus opportunity to us," Spry Fox's David Edery told us. "It hadn't even occurred to us until they did so. It does seem like they are making a push for new stuff on PS Plus but that's just a guess on my part."
"The PS Plus team made an offer to us," adds Digital Dreams' Geert Nellen. "It was a very hard decision, but in the end we decided to take it. We won't ever know how the game would have done on its own, which perhaps is a shame, but it grants us the opportunity to pay off our loans and make the next game."
Nellen notes that
Metrico is getting a wide range of review scores which could potentially have influenced sales in a negative way, and as such taking the PS Plus deal "might have been a wise decision."
"Also it's just awesome to have a great number of people play
Metrico, and that is also interesting if we're going to make a game in the same universe," he adds.
