PlayStation Stars, Sony’s new loyalty program for PlayStation customers, is now live in the Americas, including the US. You can sign up for the program for free on the PlayStation Stars website or the PlayStation app as long as you have an adult account for the PlayStation Network. The website warns that you might be put on a waitlist for up to two months, but that wasn’t the case for me when I signed up a few hours ago.
Once you’ve joined Stars, you’ll see a new icon near your profile avatar and name in the leftmost tab of the PlayStation app. Tap that icon to see your level as well as what campaigns and rewards are available and what collectibles you already have.
When I first checked out the program, I could participate in four different campaigns that required varying levels of effort. One required playing any PS4 or PS5 game to earn a digital collectible (which Sony stresses are not NFTs) that you can display in a virtual display case, which I completed as soon as I could. One campaign asks me to play fighting games for a different collectible.
Another campaign lets you earn 50 points for buying one of a selection of games on the PlayStation Store, kind of like the gold points you can earn on Nintendo’s eShop for purchasing games there. Points can be put toward other digital collectibles, PlayStation Store credit, or even some games, like Cult of the Lamb, It Takes Two, and Hades. You have to earn a lot of points for the bigger prizes, though; $20 in store credit costs 5,000 points, while The Quarry, currently the most expensive reward available, costs a whopping 17,500 points.
PlayStation Stars will also track your “level” for doing things like buying full games from the PlayStation Store and earning a certain number of uncommon trophies. Most levels only offer more collectibles, but Level 4 gives you priority when chatting with PlayStation support. But to get to Level 4, you have to do a ridiculous amount of work; not only do you need to buy four games, but you also have to collect an eye-watering 128 trophies.
Things seem a little buggy with PlayStation Stars so far. Sometimes, the app fails to load pages. And despite opening two games on my PS5, the campaign to play any game took a long time to mark itself complete. Hopefully, Sony will iron out some of those issues soon.
Personally, I don’t think I’ll be investing all that much time into PlayStation Stars. The better rewards just don’t seem like they’ll be worth the effort. But for PlayStation superfans or people who might already be playing a lot of PlayStation games anyway, the campaigns could be fun activities to earn some cute collectibles or points toward future purchases.
PlayStation Stars is also live in Asia and will launch in Europe and Australia on October 13th.