Sony's "Play at Home" initiative is now obviously a sales pitch

I remember when Sony first started doing this I was delighted like most gamers were but perhaps I was a bit more on the excited side because I had never played Ratchet and Clank despite having heard great things about it and that it was a massive seller. Upon playing the game I can understand why it sold so well - That game is fantastic especially for people that like a bit of a challenge but aren't looking for something impossible for non hardcore gamers like Nioh.

When Horizon: Zero Dawn was offered also for free, even without a Playstation Plus account, I was thinking to myself "wow, Sony is giving away some winners!" and even though I had already purchased and completed that game, I thought it was really nice of them to give that away for nothing.

The following Play at Home was a different story though as most of the games were either VR exclusives (in that you have to have the VR headset in order to play them at all) or they were VR optional games that without the VR set, were either difficult to play or just plain stupid. It was at that point that I started to think that Sony wasn't actually being generous, but had used 2 big titles to get the public's interest and now were scaling things back in order to make this a sales pitch to increase sales under the auspices of being generous and concerned about health.

This month's Play at Home titles are a sign that I was exactly correct.

Exactly zero of the games offered in May are standalone titles. They are either add-ons to already existing titles or they are Play at Home "packs" which unless you can't read between the lines, they are basically demos that you probably could have gotten for free anyway (NBA 2K21 already had a demo.)

Now I suppose if you actually played Rocket League, Brawlhalla, or whatever the hell Warframe is you might be a little excited but for gamers like me I have never understood paying extra for optional content in games anyway. The entire industry looks down on console micro-transactions so they may as well give them away for free at this point.

Another thing to note is that even when Sony was giving away "good" games for free we have to look at how old these games are and I don't think it is too much of a stretch to suggest that nearly everyone that was ever going to buy these games already did so years ago.

• Ratchet and Clank was released for PS4 in 2016
• Horizon Zero Dawn was released in 2017

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Now I am not trying to suggest that because these games are older that they suck today: I'm saying quite the opposite actually. These are both amazing games and the graphics, at least by my standards, are still awesome 4 and 5 years later. Gameplay is far more important to me than graphics anyway and this is why excessive cutscenes continually piss me off in games.

The irritating thing about this whole Play at Home thing is that it is disingenuous and that was the plan all along I would imagine. Sony doesn't care if you stay at home or not, they just want to maintain or perhaps grow their userbase. This became evident to me when all the games were VR oriented because that piece of expensive hardware didn't sell nearly as well as they had hoped. What better way to encourage a purchase of an accessory that costs MORE than the console does than to include a bunch of games that will be "free" if you just make the purchase?

_{This is for a 2nd hand headset too, I can't even find a link for a standalone VR set unless you buy it with a bundle for nearly $100 more}

So it didn't really take long for my pessimistic viewpoint to come full circle. What started out at the appearance of generosity is now a full-fledged sales pitch and I suppose we should not be surprised. After all, Sony is a company, not a charity so their desire to make more sales disguised as goodwill should now be completely evident to everyone out there. For me, I don't take the bait and not just because I have zero desire to play any of these games even if they were the full version.

I will continue to do what I have always done: Get my "free" PS Plus games and shop the bargain bins in the PS Store.