PlayStation Plus free games lead with Harry Potter Quidditch Champions in September

Harry Potter Quidditch Champions, the sports spinoff presenting the Wizarding World’s version of football/soccer/polo-on-a-flying-broom, leads the list of free games available in September to PS4 and PS5 owners with a PlayStation Plus Essential subscription.

Quidditch Champions, which also launches Sept. 3 for Nintendo Switch, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X, has been in development for several years, and had a limited, closed playtest back in the spring. There are two big reasons for interest in this spinoff:

• Harry Potter fans were disappointed that there was no Quidditch in 2023’s Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world adventure that included pretty much everything else the canon has presented over the past 25 years. (In the game, the headmaster himself says the Quidditch season at Hogwarts has been canceled due to an unfortunate injury, alas.)
• It comes about 20 years after the last Quidditch-only video game, 2003’s Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup for PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows PC and Xbox. Quidditch also featured prominently in 2001’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, exclusive to PlayStation, one of the best selling early adaptations of the Harry Potter franchise.

Bottom line, this fantasy sport — which actually has a real-life counterpart played in the U.S., U.K, Europe, Australia and elsewhere — hasn’t had a proper video game adaptation, much less one for high-definition consoles, in two decades.

The other two games are:

• MLB The Show 24: The latest version of Sony San Diego studio’s acclaimed baseball simulation arrives as MLB resolves its playoff lineup in the final month of the regular season.

  This year’s game extends the interactive documentary of baseball’s segregated leagues that MLB The Show 23 introduced last year, along with a retrospective on the Hall-of-Fame career of Derek Jeter, the shortstop and captain of the New York Yankees.

  Women are also creatable and playable characters in the main mode of the game, especially its popular Road to the Show mode, where female stars get their own storyline as they work their way through the minor leagues to the big time.

• Little Nightmares 2: A timely selection as its sequel, Little Nightmares 3, got a gameplay closeup at Gamescom 2024 Opening Night Live last week. The 2021 puzzle-platformer from Tarsier Studios and Supermassive Games puts players in the role of Mono, a new character working with the first Little Nightmares protagonist Six, to work their way out of a landscape of fiendish puzzles and ghastly enemies.

All three of these games will be available beginning Sept. 3 to PlayStation Plus subscribers. Essential is the lowest tier of service, granting members access to online multiplayer as well as two to three games to be claimed each month.

PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers, for more money, layer on access to a downloadable library of addition PS4 and PS5 games, and in Premium’s case, PS2 and original PlayStation classics.

As a reminder, August’s free PlayStation Plus Essential games — Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach, and Ender Lilies, Quietus of the Knights — may still be claimed and added to your library until Sept. 3.

Featured image via Warner Bros. Games

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