PlayStation Plus Essential's free monthly games will be available from tomorrow. Included in the titles is a new game, DKO: Divine Knockout. Not unheard of by any means, but a new label PlayStation has applied suggests its subscription service will be getting more games on day one.
An image shared by kabirsingh84 shows the DKO image on the PlayStation Store with the label attached. It reads “day 1 release”. While DKO will also launch on other platforms when it arrives on PS Plus, it won't be free. It will be on PlayStation provided you have an Essential subscription or better.
While DKO launching day one on PS Plus was known, the creation of a day one release label is notable. When PlayStation rolled out its new tiered Plus, one of the first games made available through Premium was Stray on the day it launched. While that suggested PlayStation might make more games available through Plus on day one, it has made it clear since that it has no plans for that to be a common occurrence in the future.
The insinuation, and hope in some cases, was that a new PS Plus would mean PlayStation following in Xbox's footsteps. That its Premium tier would be similar to Game Pass on which Xbox launches its biggest games like Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 from day one. Not only did God Of War Ragnarok not get that treatment, but as touched upon already, PlayStation has made it abundantly clear it doesn't plan on going the Game Pass route with its big games.
DKO isn't a major PlayStation title. In fact, it isn't published by PlayStation at all, so don't go expecting Spider-Man 2 and Final Fantasy 16 to be available on PS Plus from day one in 2023. It getting a day one release label does suggest PlayStation has plans to apply that treatment to more games in the future, just not its own first-party blockbusters. At least not yet.