Shift Up's latest PS5-exclusive action game, Stellar Blade, is the latest game to be offered for sort-of-free via PlayStation's loyalty program, but you'd need to spend so much money to actually redeem it that it's hard to imagine most people will be jumping at the opportunity.
PlayStation's loyalty program, PlayStation Stars, launched towards the end of 2022, and awards users with points for spending money in the PlayStation Store, as well as completing 'campaigns' (small tasks such as playing specific games). The rewards are genuinely pretty great – as well as full-blown games like Helldivers 2 and Rise of the Ronin, you can also redeem smaller amounts of points to earn PlayStation Store credit, which you can spend on anything you want.
So, what's the problem with Stellar Blade being one of these rewards? Well, nothing really – there's bound to be someone out there who'll be thrilled to spend their points on it, and that's great. However, actually getting the required number of points in the first place is another matter. Those aforementioned campaigns, which anyone can complete for free, don't generally award a massive amount of points, meaning that the way you'll rack up most of them is by spending money. For reference, in the US, you're awarded around 10 points for each dollar you spend. And to redeem Stellar Blade? You'll need… 17,500 points. Yikes.
That's right, assuming that you've not completed any campaigns at all, you'll need to spend roughly $1,750 on games in order to grab Stellar Blade via PlayStation Stars. Unfortunately, it can't really be thought of as something to work towards over time, either, as points expire roughly two years after you've earnt them. With that in mind, if you've been saving up yours since the loyalty program first launched, those original points will probably be set to expire towards the end of the year.
It's also worth pointing out that saving up 17,500 points all at once offers no bonus over simply redeeming your points for $5 of store credit every time you collect 1,250 of them – the conversion of how much you'd need to spend on Stellar Blade (at its full $70 price) works out exactly the same. With that in mind, even if you don't have enough points for the whole thing, you could still earn a solid discount this way. Otherwise, you could even wait for it to go on sale before using your store credit in order to get it even cheaper.
Be sure to check out our top 10 Stellar Blade tips and tricks to master the sword.
Hideo Kojima reveals Death Stranding 2: On the Beach release date, and the Collector's Edition includes exactly what I predicted it would
Former Xbox boss says GTA: San Andreas and its infamously NSFW Hot Coffee minigame "signified a maturing of the industry" and put games "on par with movies and music"
