Believe it or not, PlayStation Plus is a year old this week. This struck me as odd as I was putting this piece together. I had this article brewing in my mind for a few weeks before I finally decided to do the tiring research for all of the details and figures below, but I'm happy to report that my timing couldn't have been better. And as most gamers who purchased PS+ did so with a year's subscription, what better time to see what kind of return on your investment you could have received?

Everything below took a lot of time to gather, but all you have to do to find this information for yourself is browse the PlayStation Blog's weekly PlayStation Store Update stories like I did. There was a lot of transcription involved and quite a bit of math, too. There are bound to be minor errors, but rest assured that the overarching point of this article shines through well, and the figures and numbers can be relied on as far more than simply ballpark.

Though this was meant as a sort of objective monetary analysis of PlayStation Plus, it's hard not to render a verdict after going through the numbers and seeing everything for myself. PlayStation Plus is overwhelmingly worth its $50-per-year price point. I'm certainly among the most active PlayStation 3 users around, both in terms of time spent and money spent. So chances are if it was worth it to me, it's most certainly going to be worth it to you.

But enough talk. I'll let the numbers do the talking.

(Please keep in mind that the stats below are based on the North American version of PlayStation Plus. As such, the numbers won't be completely accurate for other territories. However, this is still an interesting study for gamers outside of America.)

Free+Games

The true hallmark of PlayStation Plus is the free games that are offered up. This is certainly the most intriguing aspect of the premium package for me, and I suspect the same can be said for most other subscribers.

What startled me the most is the sheer number of free games in PlayStation Plus' first year: 49. This is spread out over PSN games (17), Minis (21), and PSone Classics (11). If you take into account the 12 months of the year, you can look forward to downloading about four games per month. And since duplicates that were offered for free on more than one occasion (like Fieldrunners, for instance) weren't counted more than once, this figure represents 49 unique games.

If you delve deeper, you realize how much of a financial gain there is in the free games alone, even if the (ridiculous) argument can be made that you don't technically own them, because once your subscription lapses, you lose access to the titles in question. These games, all told, are worth $349.51, averaging $7.13 per free game. The 17 PSN games were worth, on average, $11.52 each ($195.83 in total), the 21 Minis are worth $3.61 each ($75.79 in total), and the 11 PSone Classics worth $7.08 each ($77.89 in total).

If you were to only focus on and download games that were given for free and you had a 12-month subscription at $50 a year, you'd have the capacity to get around seven times the value of the price of admission. And that doesn't take into account anything else that's offered.

Discounts

After free games, discounts are the next best thing given to PlayStation Plus subscribers. And there have been about twice as many discounts offered as there have been free games. Just like with free games, some discounts were offered on identical games more than once, but have only been counted once for the sake of the figures here.

In one year, exactly 100 games were discounted for PlayStation Plus subscribers. These vary over five different categories: PSN games (63), Minis (7), Retail Games (1), PSone Classics (22) and PSP Games (7). Factoring in the 12 months of the year, PS+ subscribers could, on average, look forward to about eight or nine fresh discounts each month.

Obviously, this is more impressive if you look at things from a financial perspective. The 100 discounts given over the previous year were worth $453.87 in total. That's about $4.54 per discount given. If you look at the numbers more specifically, you'll find some interesting statistics. The 63 PSN games discounted were worth $284.97 in total, or $4.52 each. The seven discounted Minis were slashed for a total of $17.69, averaging $2.53 each. The lone retail game that was discounted (in digital form, of course) got cut by $14.99. The 22 PSone Classics discounted would have saved you a cumulative $67.78, averaging $3.08 per game. And seven PSP titles had the most severe discount-per-game ratio. Totaling $71.44, each discount would thus be worth $10.21.