Back in 2017, Microsoft debuted its ambitious subscription service, Xbox Game Pass. For years, Game Pass was able to grow from strength to strength in peace, with virtually no competition to stand in its way. But in 2022, PlayStation Plus changed all that. Sony released its PS Plus Extra and Premium tiers, giving players a vast library of installable titles for one monthly fee.
Along with those more expensive tiers, Sony continues to offer its free PlayStation Plus monthly games, and the next batch has just been announced. PS Plus' July 2025 line-up is set to include King of Fighters XV, Jusant, and Diablo 4, the latter of which ironically goes to prove Xbox's commitment to the wider gaming industry.
Every Monthly Game Added To PS Plus
New monthly PlayStation Plus games! Sony is always adding goodies to its subscription service. The January 2026 Extra games have been revealed.
Diablo 4 Is One of PS Plus' July 2025 Free Games
Diablo 4 Hitting Xbox Game Pass Was a Big Deal
All the way back in January 2022, Microsoft announced its intentions to acquire Activision-Blizzard for an eye-watering $68.7 billion. Though this announcement caused a lot of heated speculation about what this could mean for the future of the gaming industry, one of the clear upsides for consumers was that the acquisition could lead to Actvision-Blizzard games coming to Xbox Game Pass in the future.
It took a while for that to come to fruition, but in March 2024 – five months after Microsoft's acquisition of Activision-Blizzard was completed – Diablo 4 came to Xbox Game Pass, flinging the floodgates wide open. Diablo 4 not only marked the first Activision-Blizzard game to come to Game Pass post-acquisition, it also marked the biggest first-party Game Pass launch to that point in terms of hours played, with subscribers putting in 10 million hours in its first 10 days on the service.
Since then, a few more Activision-Blizzard titles have come to Xbox Game Pass, and it's usually a pretty big deal whenever they show up. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, for instance, set a new record for the number of launch day Game Pass subscriptions back in October 2024.
Xbox Continues to Stay True to its New Strategy
But while Activision-Blizzard is still a relatively new string to Xbox's bow, it isn't afraid to share. Diablo 4 isn't just one of PS Plus' July 2025 free games, it's the headliner of next month's line-up. PlayStation users have obviously been able to buy Diablo 4 since its June 2023 release date, but it's still impressive to see such a big game being a frontrunner for PlayStation Plus' Essential tier, and even more impressive considering the game's importance to Xbox Game Pass, a direct competitor to Sony's subscription service.
Jusant, another one of PS Plus' July 2025 free games, was a day-one Xbox Game Pass title when it launched in October 2023.
About a year ago, Xbox announced a pretty radical strategy change. Previous first-party Xbox games would be hopping over to other platforms, and future first-party releases had the potential to join them. Xbox followed through on this plan, porting Sea of Thieves, Grounded, and Pentiment within weeks, and that strategy continues today, with Gears of War: Reloaded bringing the flagship Xbox franchise to PlayStation in August.
Xbox has continued to build on this multi-platform strategy with its recent "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign, which highlights the ways people can play Xbox Game Pass titles on their various consoles, PCs, and handheld devices. Diablo 4 coming to PlayStation Plus is just the latest piece of evidence that Xbox really is focused on getting its games in as many hands as possible.
Diablo 4
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 88 /100 Critics Rec: 93%
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG, Hack and Slash
