Hi, my sister is thinking of buying my BIL the PS4 Spider-Man bundle that is on sale this week for $199. She was asking me a few questions but I'm an Xbox guy and don't know.

Is there an annual fee to get online like Xbox's live gold? Anything we should know about starting out with PS? It looks like they have all the usual streaming services, plus Vudu (I was worried Vudu might be blocked in favor of PS Vue since it is a competitor).

No annual fee, but you can get ps plus for 60 annually. Ps plus offers free and discounted stuff.

I think there is a vudu app. I'll check when I get home

Heismenberg said:

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I'm pretty sure you have to have PS plus membership to play online.

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I'd love clarification about this.

ETA- do you have to have PS Plus to stream Netflix and the like?

I have PS + but AFAIK you need it to play online games but not any online streaming TV stuff. PS+ also gives you access to monthly free games that you can add to your library and download whenever for free as long as you keep PS+ active. Some of these games are awful some are very very good. If you play online much at all or like trying various games for free PS+ is not a bad use of spare cash.

Btw, PS+ is on sale right now for $40 on amazon, so now would be the time to buy it if yall think he's going to want to play multiplayer games online, since this is as low as it ever goes. If he'd only play single player games and doesnt care about the free monthly games then it may not be necessary though.

You need PS Plus to play multiplayer games. You do not need it for streaming services to work.

Sony opted for an open marketplace...almost all major streaming services have apps. Vudu is available.

You need PS+ to play most multiplayer games online. The one big exception to this is free-to-play games (like fortnite), where you don't need anything extra.