PlayStation Plus Was "Devastating" to Free PS5 Game

A PlayStation Plus free game that was available for PlayStation 5 owners in early 2021 proved "devastating" to the title's developer. In a general sense, most devs that put their games on PS Plus seem to be happy with the end result, primarily because it ends up allowing their project to reach an even larger audience than normal. And while that may have been also true with this game in mention, it also seems to have impacted its ability to make more money. 

In a recent conversation with the Xbox Expansion Pass podcast, Oddworld: Soulstorm creator Lorne Lanning said that putting the game on PlayStation Plus in early 2021 didn't work out in the studio's favor. Lanning explained that at the time when he agreed to bring Soulstorm to PS Plus, it was expected for the title to launch in January 2021. However, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, this development timeline ended up shifting, which led to Oddworld: Soulstorm not releasing until April 2021. 

So how did this prove to hurt the game? Well, Lanning said that if Soulstorm would have released on PlayStation Plus in January 2021 as it was first going to, the install base of the PS5 would have been much smaller at the time. As such, Lanning said that the amount of fixed income that Sony ended up giving the studio to bring Oddworld: Soulstorm to PS Plus likely would have been more than what the game would've made in its first month from natural sales. However, this didn't end up proving to be true when it arrived in April 2021 because the PS5 install base was much larger at that time. As a result, Lanning said that the studio likely left money on the table that it otherwise would've earned. 

It's worth noting that Lanning didn't blame those at Sony for how this PlayStation Plus deal worked out for the team at Oddworld Inhabitants. There's also no way of even knowing if Lanning's own theories about how Soulstorm would've performed on its own with PS Plus would even have been accurate. Still, it's interesting to hear him talk about a situation where PS Plus didn't prove to be a big boost to Oddworld Inhabitants, given that the opposite is more often than not true with plenty of other releases. 

[H/T PSLS]