I’ve been a Playstation Plus subscriber for a couple of years now…

Why, some of you may ask.

Good point, I will undoubtedly respond.

I’ve known one other person aside from myself to actually subscribe to Sony’s “premium member” service, and that’s Micropolo, the managing editor of Postgamer.net and a daily contributor.

We both feel pretty much the same way about how Playstation Plus has been received since it’s inception, and overall, it’s been a huge dissapointment.

For less than $5 a month, Playstation Plus offers it’s subscribers a chance to get free wallpapers and avatars (meh), Beta access to upcoming games, receive early access to new ones, and even get a few games for free.

Sounds great right? Well until recently, the free games have been lackluster (usually flopped releases or some of the lamer indie titles), the betas have been very few and very far between, and while the discounts on downloadable games are pretty big, I almost never felt pulled towards buying any of the titles they offered, because they usually didn’t bother discounting the game until it had been out for a long time. By then I’ve already played it.

However, that all seems to be changing lately. In the last week of May, Sony announced that all PS Plus members would have access to 50% off some of the most highly rated PS3 games to date, for one week only. Games like Red Dead Redeption, BioShock 2, and L.A. Noire each wound up costing about $19 for subscribers.

Unfortunately this deal was done on June 4th, but it does show you that Sony is making an effort to give bigger rewards to the PS Plus subscriber audience.

Following up that amazing sale, just this past Tuesday Sony released about $260 worth of free games to Playstation Plus subscribers, and these games are definitely worth it.

The list includes: Virtua Fighter 5, inFAMOUS 2, Little Big Planet 2, Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, Just Cause 2, Laura Croft and the Guardian of Light, and several highly rated indie games to boot. Granted, these titles have been out for a while now, but they’re all (from what I’ve played) great games.

Just when I was starting to consider ending my subscription, Sony stepped up and made good on it’s word. I finally feel like shelling out $5 a month has gotten me something worthwhile. Let’s hope they keep up this trend and bring even more to the table in the future.