PlayStation Pluscontinues to be a mostly worthwhile service, especially for those who prefer to play online. It feels almost necessary at this point, yet it is hard to deny that it doesn’t offer quite the same value proposition as its direct competitor, Xbox Game Pass. That’s not inherently an issue, especially as there are a lot of factors surrounding Xbox Game Pass' ridiculous value, such as Microsoft’s seemingly bottomless wallet and the fact that it may not be earning the company much money compared to how much it’s losing on getting games on the service.
Rocket League Was The Perfect Day-One PS Plus Game
It Was The Ultimate Multiplayer Title For The Service
Rocket Leaguewas an enormous success when it launched, primarily because it was free on PlayStation Plus. A game likeRocket Leaguewas a bit unprecedented in 2015. Its multiplayer-focused, arcadey gameplay model was complemented by it ostensibly being one of the first live service games on the market. Of course, that term hadn’t been popularized then, with the former vice president of developer Psyonix, Jeremy Dunham, referring to it as a “live project” in a 2016 interview withForbes. By 2016, 42% of the game’s player base were on PlayStation, with 36% playing via Steam, and 22% on Xbox.
The popularity of the PlayStation, the novelty ofRocket League’slive service design coupled with its exceptional gameplay, and the relative freshness of PS Plus coalesced to make it a smashing success.
That distribution of players proved that the word of mouth it garnered from its time as a free game on PS Plus was hugely successfulin convincing people on other platforms to pay for it. This was likely partially thanks to its live service model delivering free DLC-sized expansions, which had players returning to the game and encouraging their friends to pick it up and thus pay for it. By 2016,Rocket Leaguehad made $110 million and would go on to make a substantial amount more, even once itwent F2P and abandoned Steam.
But its initial success,its first few chart-topping days as a free release on PlayStation Plus, was as a result of its engaging, content-rich gameplay loop, the simplicity of its premise, and the ease of playing together. It was also released at a time before live service games were overwhelming the industry and becoming every developer and publisher’s object of desire. The novelty of a game that continued development post-launch, and the content released during that period being some of its best and most substantial was almost certainly a factor in the enormous success ofRocket League.
To give context to how freshRocket Leaguewas,Fortnite’sall-consuming battle royale mode wasn’t released for another two years afterRocket Leaguedebuted in 2015. Obviously, games as a service were around long beforeRocket LeagueandFortnite, with MMOs starting the trend, and titles likeTF2,League of Legends,Counter Strike, andDOTA 2offering an experience akin to how live service games are now. However,Rocket Leaguewas certainly one of the first to adopt the model more commonly associated with contemporary live service games.
The PS4 had only been out for over a year by 2015 and was already hugely successful, having sold over 35 million units according toStatista. PS Plus was also only five years old and was slowly establishing its identity.The popularity of the PlayStation, the novelty ofRocket League’slive service design, coupled with its exceptional gameplay, and the relative freshness of PS Plus, coalesced to make it a smashing success, and easily one of thebest games on PS Plus. That is also why, despite attempting to replicate its success, it remains PS Plus' greatest exclusive.
FBC: Firebreak Lacks Rocket League’s Unique Appeal
It Hasn’t Captured Audiences In The Same Way
All of this context about how amazingRocket Leaguewas is necessary to understand whyFBC: Firebreakis hugely disappointing. It is PlayStation Plus' most recent attempt at recapturing the multiplayer magic thatRocket Leagueoffered nearly a decade ago, which, like all of its other attempts, has seemingly failed. There are plenty of reasons why, but, mostcrucially, players are simply not resonating withFBC: Firebreakin the way that its developer, Remedy Entertainment, was likely hoping, let alone Sony.
FBC: Firebreakis releasing at what feels like the tail end of the popularity of live service games, with players having long since soured on them. It comes off the back of several otherLeft 4 Dead 2clones, likeBack 4 Blood,Earthfall,The Anacrusis,World War Z, and more, making it yet another entry into a somewhat stuffed genre that still hasn’t had an entry as good as its progenitor. Of course, it is also developer Remedy’s first foray into multiplayer gaming, which, naturally, brings with it plenty of risks.
All of this won’t helpFBC: Firebreakstand out, but that doesn’t mean it was destined to fail. After all, Rematch, a live-service football game by the developers of the very single-player-focusedSifu, wasreleased to critical success and huge sales. So, the factors surroundingFBC: Firebreak’sdevelopment aren’t exclusively the reason it is sitting on"Mostly Negative" reviews on Steam. That boils down to the fact thatFirebreakjust isn’t very fun. It doesn’t utilizeControl’sfascinating world enough, it doesn’t have enough variety, and the levels it does offer are fine, at best.
PS Plus Can’t Compare With Game Pass Day-One Releases
The Quality & Quantity Isn’t There
However,perhaps we shouldn’t be all that surprised that a multiplayer game releasing for free on PlayStation Plus is somewhat doomed to fail. That has largely been the platform’s modus operandi for the past decade as it has desperately attempted to replicate the success of Rocket League. One only has to look at PlayStation Plus' ill-fated day-one releases of the past five years to see how deeply unsuccessful it has been. Naturally, few will likely remember or have playedDestruction AllStars,First Class Trouble,Arcadegeddon,Meet Your Maker,Foamstars,Harry Potter: Quiddich Champions, andDeath Note: Killer Within.
Now, I don’t want to cherry-pick, as PlayStation Plus did get one other strong multiplayer-focused day-one exclusive that came close to rivalingRocket League, which wasFall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. It also got a number of decent single-player-focused titles, likeStrayandTchia. However, largely,PS Plus has struggled to offer a game as successful and compelling asRocket League,as well as really anything remotely resembling the ridiculouslyimpressive output on Game Pass. Since its inception, PS Plus has failed to offer the same value as Game Pass, especially in the realm of day-one exclusives.
Naturally, there is a lot of nuance to this topic, namely surrounding Microsoft’s seemingly limitless budget compared to Sony’s. There is simply not enough money there to get the big titles that Xbox Game Pass is drawing in, a service that, while Microsoft claims is profitable, has existed during a time of immense layoffs within the company and the closure of several of its studios, including the successful Tango Gameworks. However,as much as money is certainly a factor, PlayStation also routinely picks bad games to put on the service.
As much as many wish that PlayStation Plus would be able to replicate itsRocket Leaguesuccess all these years later, it simply hasn’t and seemingly cannot, as evidenced by the slew of poorly performing titles likeFBC: Firebreak, as unfortunate as that is.
Destruction AllStarsandFoamstarsboth proved enormous flops and were simply not worth putting on there.FBC: Firebreak, even despite itsextensive 2025 roadmap, will likely go the same way, potentially even going down the free-to-play route like other PS Plus games, includingRocket League,Fall Guys, andArcadegeddon. As much as many wish thatPlayStation Pluswould be able to replicate itsRocket Leaguesuccess all these years later, it simply hasn’t and seemingly cannot, as evidenced by the slew of poorly performing titles likeFBC: Firebreak, as unfortunate as that is.
