One Year of PlayStation Plus Value In Free Games: $1854.86

Sony is celebrating one full year of PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection, and posted the image above showcasing all 64 free games offered since Instant Game Collection launched.

That's a lot of games for subscribing to PlayStation Plus for just $49.99 a year. This got me wondering… just how much does that $49.99 get you in value? Now that I had all of the free games offered right before my very eyes, a little bit of lazy Googling and lazier mathematics through an Excel spreadsheet I whipped up gave me the answer I was looking for. 

Ready for this? In just one year of PlayStation Plus—all the free games pictured up top—are valued at roughly $1854.86.

That number may seem precise, but I admittedly cheated a little. If I had to hunt down the current price of 64 games, it'd have taken all week. So what I decided would give me the most accurate figure I could get was if I went by the price of each game at its release. That means, retail PS3 titles, unless they were launched at a discount price, are $59.99 a piece. Now I know that there is no way you're going to pay $59.99 for inFamous 2 so long after it released, but seriously, are you going to nitpick that much about this estimated value? Especially when you paid less than the full cost of one retail PS3 game for over $1800 in free games? I didn't think so.

I used the same "price on release date" formula for PS Vita, PSP, and PSN-only titles as well. And if you think about it, there's even more value there since some of these games are cross-buy titles that give you access to both a PS3 and PS Vita version of the game. The Walking Dead was a tough one since it released via PlayStation Plus as episodes, so instead I just wrapped it up for its retail price for the disc version released late last year.

Can't beleive Sony gave away that much money's worth of games in just one year of PlayStation Plus? And for only $49.99? Go ahead, check my math.

Really, do you need more reason to subscribe to PlayStation Plus? 

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