Latest titles for PlayStation Plus Essentials are available now. Selections for this November include Stray, Absolutely accurate battle simulatorand EA Sports WRC 24. The service has had a strong year overall, especially in the summer when Sony celebrated 15 years of PlayStation Plus, which continued into the fall with a number of great horror and thriller entries for October.
A number of notable and well-received games were added to the PS Plus catalog this year, such as Lies P, Sword of the Sea, Stardew Valleyand Diablo 4. Of the three core titles for this month, however Stray it stands out not only as an excellent experience, but as part of a group of games that have a rather special connection to PS Plus.
Stray On PS Plus Essential for November 2025 a strange circumstance repeats itself
PlayStation Plus history of “Double-Dipping” games between levels
Stray is the latest title to find itself in the position of having previously been on PS Plus, albeit only at the higher Extra and Premium tiers. Originally coming to the service as a user-first title in July 2022, it was removed about a year later before being added back to the Essential catalog for this month. And there are several other titles that have shared this approach in the past as well:
- Ghostwire: Tokyo- First added to PS Plus Extra in March 2023 and then to Essential in November 2024.
- It takes two- Included on Extra in July 2023, then added to Essential in December 2024.
- Little Nightmares – It arrived on all three tiers (Essential, Extra and Premium) in August 2022 and was removed in June 2023.
It takes two and Ghostwire: Tokyo they were spaced out about a little over a year between service levels Stray marks the longest time gap between a title on PS Plus Extra/Premium and Essential. Little nightmares is the strangest of all because it was on all PS Plus tiers at the same time before it was removed, which seems to be the only time this has ever happened in the service's history, and certainly far from the norm.
This practice can benefit those members who only subscribe to Essential, allowing them to later get games that were originally on the higher priced tiers. However, it also presents something of a questionable double-edged sword in the long run, as it essentially means that members of these higher tiers could have already pre-claimed these games, and therefore technically not received a new title at the time – something that applies to Stray now too.
Stray being included in PS Plus Essential after could inspire this pattern to continue
Although the above circumstances are the exception to the rule, and overall Sony offers different titles for each tier each month, it has set a certain precedent for this to happen again in the future, at least in certain cases. One potential recent example in the same category as Stray can be Sword of the SeaPS Plus Extra one-day game for August. Like Stray, Sword of the Sea has been highly acclaimed by fans and critics, but is currently only available on the top two tiers. The fact that some PS Plus titles have followed this pattern suggests that this might be the case. And if it follows this way Stray and the games mentioned above made it, members could see it or more titles coming to Essential in a few years.
