Sony to add 60Hz versions of classic games to PlayStation Plus in EU

Sony plans to add NTSC versions of ‘most’ classic games to the new PlayStation Plus subscriptions in Europe and other regions. The company will announce this on Thursday. Currently, some titles are only available there as PAL versions.

Sony writes on Twitter that the company plans to roll out NTSC options for “the majority of the classic games offered in the PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe subscription.” This applies to the regions of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

In the PS1 and PS2 era, PAL games were typically released in regions such as Europe. In PAL regions, 50Hz was the standard for televisions, as opposed to 60Hz for the US NTSC standard. In practice, this means that games running at 30fps in NTSC regions were reduced to 25fps in PAL regions. At the same time, PAL games often had language options that the NTSC versions lacked. Presumably that’s why Sony made PAL games available in certain regions.

Sony announced its revamped PlayStation Plus subscriptions earlier this year, which became available in Europe on Thursday. The company offers three different options. The most expensive subscription, which will be available in Europe under the name Premium, will receive a catalog of classic PlayStation and PSP games.

The service launched in Asia at the end of May, when it turned out that Sony was using PAL builds for certain classic games, including in regions like Taiwan, where NTSC is the standard, wrote VGC† This involved, for example, the vast majority of Sony’s first-party games. In the US came the games available as NTSC†

Nintendo received similar criticism last year when it added N64 games to its Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription. At the announcement, the company showed 50Hz images of those titles. Before the actual release, however, Nintendo announced that it would also make 60Hz versions of all N64 games available.