PS Plus "contributing in a big way" to increased PSN sales

Premium subscription offer PlayStation Plus is going from strength to strength, and driving up sales elsewhere on the PlayStation Network.

A SCE America representative told GamesIndustry that 97% of PlayStation Plus users report being happy with the service, the highest satisfaction in its history, while 93% intend to renew.

"The success of PS Plus is contributing in a big way to driving overall PSN sales, as our last quarter was the biggest in terms of transactional sales in PSN's six-year history," she added.

The announcement of PlayStation Plus's Instant Collection scheme, which provides full games each month which the user can download and keep until their subscription expires, seems to have driven interest up.

"The immediate consumer reaction was completely off the charts, and membership sales more than doubled during the week of E3," the representative said.

Executive John Koller said Plus would be a "significant" part of Sony's marketing efforts over the next few years,

"Since E3, we've seen a significant rise in PlayStation Plus adoption and we'll be utilising this," he said.

"This is a nice weapon in our arsenal that we'll be utilising."

Koller said the package is particularly attractive to new users, who find instant Colelction particularly appealing as they don't already own as many games as a veteran, and to those who aren't yet comfortable with digital content in general.

"The new consumers who are coming in in particular, which is what I'm looking at here, if we can introduce them to PlayStation Plus and this instant game collection idea, you're bringing them into a world that may be a bit foreign to them if they don't own a system this current cycle," he said.

"So that comfort level is important to us, it's important to publishers, it's important I think to most people in this industry that we get them comfortable with digital content."