Sony PlayStation Plus:12 Month Membership

This serves as more of a review of the PS+ service than the actual "product" I received from Amazon. I like the idea of PlayStation Plus but I just find that it's personally not something that I would pay for again. I bought the one-year subscription after I received a PS4 as a gift. The subscription was on sale for Black Friday at half-off so I figured it was a good time to see if the service was worthwhile. With PS+ there are a few "perks" you get in return for your subscription payment. While you are subscribed you get access to multiplayer on PS4 (PS3 and Vita already have free multiplayer), cloud storage for saved games, automatic updates, and "free" games each month. I really have to stress the idea of the games being free is a complete fallacy. You pay for the subscription and you get to play games in return. You are still paying for the games; they are not without a monetary cost. And once the subscription expires your access to the game goes away. It's nothing more than an extended rental. I was also unimpressed with the selection of games offered during my year's subscription. I downloaded and played a handful of the dozens that were offered and really only enjoyed one of them. That's no fault of Sony's or any fault of the service; it's just a personal opinion. I'm not a big fan of indie games (in general) and that seems to make up the bulk of Sony's Instant Game Collection that they offer with PS+ The automatic updates and cloud storage are nice features, but ultimately I never used them or really cared that they were even there. Steam offers these same features for free on PC and it's done far more elegantly, too. PS+ is also required for multiplayer on PS4, which in my opinion is completely stupid. I'm not into multiplayer or competitive games but it's stupid to force a subscription service on those people that enjoy it. Again, multiplayer is free on Steam and PC (excluding games that are deliberately subscription-based) and it still is free on PS3 and Vita. Forcing the subscription onto PS4 users to play with people seems completely unnecessary and is just a cash-grab mechanic. Overall, I wouldn't re-subscribe to PS+ with the current perks being offered. I'm sure it benefits a large portion of people, but I'm not one of them. I'm just not the target demographic for this sort of service.