Sony announces that all PlayStation 4 owners will be able to experience online multiplayer this weekend without needing a PlayStation Plus subscription.
Hot off the heels of PlayStation's best Black Friday ever, Sony has realized that now marks the perfect opportunity to convert more PS4 owners to being PlayStation Plus subscribers. In order to do this, they have announced that multiplayer functionality this coming weekend will be free to all PS4 owners, beginning Friday, December 11th at 12:01am Pacific and ending Sunday, December 13th at 11:59pm Pacific.
Sony has done free multiplayer events in the past, but the timing of this one is especially important. There are many new PlayStation 4 owners after the Black Friday shopping weekend, and the idea is that they will be convinced to subscribe to PS Plus by experiencing online multiplayer. Unfortunately, other PS Plus benefits, such as having access to free games while being a subscriber, are not included in the free weekend.
Sony has also timed this free PS4 weekend multiplayer event to coincide with the release of the Battle of Jakku DLC expansion for Star Wars Battlefront. Star Wars Battlefront has been one of the games that Sony has pushed hardest this holiday season, going as far as to release a Star Wars Battlefront PS4 bundle, complete with a Darth Vader-themed console. While it would be odd for someone to purchase the Battlefront bundle and not have PS Plus due to its focus on online multiplayer, there are undoubtedly some that have done just that, and perhaps experiencing the game online will be enough to finally get them to subscribe to PS Plus.
Back when it was first announced that online multiplayer would require a PS Plus subscription on PS4, many fans were upset. After all, one of the main selling points of the PlayStation 3 over the Xbox 360 was that the PS3 didn't require users to pay extra to play games online. However, the sting was alleviated a bit thanks to the additional PS Plus bonus of free games, and quite frankly, the subscription pays for itself after a few months anyway.
Even so, there are those that outright refuse to subscribe to PS Plus on the principle that they didn't have to pay for multiplayer last-gen, and they shouldn't now. That's another group that Sony is targeting with this free online multiplayer weekend event on PS4, with the hopes that they will remember what they enjoyed about online multiplayer and take the plunge by signing up for a PS Plus subscription.
Are you subscribed to PlayStation Plus? If not, will you be taking advantage of the free online multiplayer weekend event on PS4? Sound off in the comments below and let us know your thoughts as they pertain to online multiplayer on the PlayStation 4.
PlayStation 4's free multiplayer weekend begins on Friday, December 11th and concludes on Sunday, December 13th.
Source: PlayStation Blog