Sony introduces new PlayStation Stars: Cost of entry, potential rewards, and more

Sony has recently introduced a brand new loyalty program coming to fans of their platforms in the form of PlayStation Stars. Arriving later this year, the company wanted to create something to reward and challenge their fans, but not without rewards.

Players will be able to claim these rewards simply by completing challenges and playing games. To make things better, Sony has revealed what sort of things players should expect when PlayStation Stars comes to life later this year.

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PlayStation Stars is free and is coming later in 2022

Perhaps the best part of PlayStation Stars is that it will be free when it arrives. The upcoming system will have campaigns and activities for players to take part in, much like the “Monthly Check-In” campaign. Some, like the Monthly Check-In, will be easy, but there will be more difficult challenges to take part in as well. This was detailed by Grace Chen, Vice President of Network Advertising, Loyalty, & Licensed Merchandise in her statement:

“Our “Monthly Check-In” campaign simply requires you to play any game to receive a reward, while other campaigns require you to win tournaments, earn specific trophies, or even be the first player to platinum a blockbuster title in your local time zone.”

Clearly, not all of this is going to be attainable by every player, so some will gain loyalty points faster than others. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like every challenge will be unique, or on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Not every PlayStation owner is on the hunt for Platinum trophies, but being rewarded for it could certainly change players’ minds going forward. This is especially true if it means these rewards could be used to get money off of upcoming games or DLCs.

Completing challenges will earn the player loyalty points, which can be used in a catalog filled with rewards. The PlayStation blog that discussed the PlayStation Stars update discussed potential rewards, which included PSN wallet funds and PlayStation Store products. Furthermore, purchasing items on the PlayStation Store will also earn them points as well.

This system will also have a new reward of “digital collectibles," which will represent a wide variety of Sony products and franchises. This can include figurines of beloved characters or other digital pieces of entertainment. The aim is to show off Sony’s history through these digital items, several of which will be available to collect, although they will be quite rare.

There was some fear on social media that Sony was getting into NFTs with the digital collectibles, but that does not seem to be the case. NFTs are digital items that players spend money on and are connected to the blockchain, but there is no discussion of that in the Sony blog.

As of writing this article, there is no release date for PlayStation Stars, but more information should be made available in the future. What Sony has revealed is not the end of what the company plans on doing with the system either. It is sure to evolve over time, but exactly what that means isn’t clear yet.

This could create more tournament possibilities through the Sony consoles, such as with the upcoming Street Fighter VI. For years, trophies have done nothing other than show off how much of a game a player has completed, but the new PlayStation Stars system could lead to players being rewarded for putting effort and work into their favorite games, and be rewarded for purchasing on the PlayStation store instead of other storefronts.