Playstation Plus is the best investment you can make if you own a PS3
While it has faded a bit over time I have to confess I am still a Sony fanboy. Aside from Bethesda games (which run like shit on PS3 due to lack of skill on that platform) and the Mass Effect series if a game is multi-platform I get it on PS3. I am currently on my second PS3 and my fourth Xbox 360. To add context to the disparity on replacing hardware I bought an Xbox nearly 18 months AFTER I got my PS3. So in 6 years of owning a PS3 it was replaced once and in 4 and a half years I went through 4 Xbox consoles. Presumably I now have the uber stable Xbox 360 design so I should be good, but still my confidence in the hardware is not terribly high.
When my PS3 died, it was a catastrophic death, the dreaded Yellow light of death. Because I had the original phat 60Gb system with backwards compatibility I was loathe to give it up. So I got a local repair guy to fix it, he warned me it would be temporary, but it was worth it to get backups started on my PS3. You see I had 4 1/2 years of saves on the system, probably in excess of 400 hours of gameplay that would have been lost. Once I had my PS3 back home I started a rigorous backup schedule and when it inevitably failed I bought a PS3 Slim, restored my backups and discovered that not all games work on the backup system.
I had looked at Playstation Plus in the past, it offered some bonuses in the form of initially bland free games, but the key at the time for me was the cloud based saves and automatic updates. Nothing is more annoying on the PS3 then putting a game in and waiting 30 minutes for updates to be applied. With PS Plus these updates (Game and PS3 core) are applied overnight so your system is always up to date. Cloud saves is another key, all important games are stored to the cloud meaning I will always have a backup of my saves. I subscribed immediately and as the months went by it became more and more worth it. The free games and perks such as discounts became deeper every month and at current count I have gotten the following games for free:
-Comet Crash
-All the Magic Orbz expansions
-Sonic the Hedgehog 2
-Crash Team Racing
-Crash Bandicoot 2
-Hydrophobia: Prophecy
-Entire Jurassic Park the Game
-Entire Back to the Future the Game
-Marvel Pinball
-Spyro: Year of the Dragon
-Syphon Filter 2
-Final Fantasy V
-Far Cry 2
-Battle Fantasia
-The Simpsons Arcade game
-Hamsterball
-Fatal Inertia EX
-Mahjong tales
-Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
-UmJammer Lammy
-Splinter Cell Essentials
-Shank 2
-Betas for Starhawk and Ghost Recon Future Warrior
-Plus heavy discounts on Final Fantasy games and tons of dynamic themes.
Many of these games are truly excellent and this month it gets even better with the following being given free:
-Awesomenauts
-Trine 2
-Rock of Ages
-Castlevania SOTN and Chrinicles
I mean this is almost ridiculous. So many free games and services that actually improve the experience. Compare this to my Xbox Live account that gets sporadic and not very good discounts and online play. I get that for free on PlayStation already. I won’t knock the Xbox live experience, it is stable, and cross game chat is amazing, but $50/year amazing? No.
I will gladly pay $50 per year for PlayStation plus for the games, discounts and features. My Xbox 360 gold account lapses every month and I wait till offer me live for a month at $1, that is how little the service means to me.
Serious/Gamer 