Sony has acquired anime streaming service Crunchyroll for a whopping $1.2 billion, with the goal to create a unified anime streaming service. The Sony Crunchyroll acquisition is obviously going to be huge for anime watchers, but it may also have a significant impact on PlayStation Plus subscriptions. According to a new report, it seems as though Sony may soon be offering a more expensive tier of PS Plus that would potentially come with benefits tied to the Crunchyroll acquisition.

This was reported by Eurogamer, who claims to have heard that there are "plans to potentially offer Crunchyroll as part of a more expensive premium PlayStation Plus offering." As it stands, there is only one tier of PlayStation Plus currently available, which gets subscribers discounts, free games every month, online multiplayer access, and various other perks. It's unclear exactly how much more expensive this new version of PS Plus would be or if it would offer more to subscribers than just Crunchyroll access.

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Though Crunchyroll is the only other bonus mentioned by Eurogamer as a potential benefit for this more expensive PlayStation Plus, there are other services Sony could potentially roll up into a higher-tier PS Plus subscription. Besides Crunchyroll, a more expensive PS Plus subscription could potentially come with Funimation access as well. Sony could also consider bundling PlayStation Now into the mix to have something equivalent to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

For the uninitiated, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate combines Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold, giving players access to the extensive library of Game Pass games along with all of the usual Xbox Live Gold benefits. So far, Sony has mostly kept PlayStation Now and PlayStation Plus separate, but it's easy to see how combining the two services could be hugely beneficial for the company, especially when it comes to growing the number of PlayStation Now subscribers.

PlayStation Now could be Sony's answer to Xbox Game Pass, as the service already offers game streaming and has hundreds of titles readily available for subscribers to check out. Despite this, it seems Sony has struggled to make PlayStation Now as exciting to gamers as Xbox Game Pass, likely due to the lack of brand new day one games hitting the PlayStation Now service. It's unlikely that Sony will start releasing games day one on a subscription service, but combining PS Now and PS Plus is still one big way Sony could potentially gain more subscribers.

All of this is just speculation at this time. As previously stated, the only bonus service mentioned by Eurogamer is Crunchyroll, and Sony itself has not actually said anything about a higher-tier PS Plus subscription option.

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Source: Eurogamer