PlayStation Plus members get free NBA 2K16 during NBA Finals

By Danny Cowan May 31, 2016

PlayStation Plus Free PS4 Games Lineup June 2016

Sony announced that 2K’s PlayStation 4 basketball sim NBA 2K16 will be free to download for PlayStation Plus subscribers as the Golden State Warriors take on the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals next month.

Also on tap for service subscribers in June is Gone Home, a PlayStation 4 version of developer Fullbright’s acclaimed environmental exploration game.

Released in September of 2015, NBA 2K16 is the latest entry in developer Visual Concepts’ long-running basketball sim series. In addition to tackling NBA 2K16‘s single-player campaign mode, players can compete with friends locally and online via several included multiplayer modes.

Fans will find that the series’ flagship “MyCareer” mode has been overhauled in NBA 2K16. Written and directed by Spike Lee, NBA 2K16‘s MyCareer mode chronicles the rise of a player-created basketball star through his high school and college years as he works toward a professional career in the NBA.

PlayStation 4 owners will also receive indie standout Gone Home free of charge in June. Originally released for PCs in 2013, Gone Home debuted for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One earlier this year, and the game’s visually upgraded “Console Edition” will be available free of charge via the PlayStation Network next month.

Gone Home is an exploration-driven adventure game that puts players in the role of a young woman searching for her missing family. Taking place entirely within a two-story house, players explore their surroundings in the hopes of piecing together the events leading up to the family’s disappearance.

Sony is also digging deep into its back catalog for next month’s featured PlayStation Plus games on legacy platforms. PlayStation 3 owners will get a free copy of Sony’s eight-year-old perspective puzzler Echochrome in June, along with all 12 chapters of 2008’s episodic survival horror series Siren: Blood Curse.

PlayStation Plus subscribers will additionally receive a digital copy of the PSP game God of War: Chains of Olympus in June, along with the PS Vita minigame compilation Little Deviants.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…

Gaming

PS Plus subscribers can get PS4’s most underrated exclusive for free next month

Art fights a giant bird in Dreams.

Sony announced the three-game lineup that PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers can redeem for free throughout the month of August. It's an odd batch of titles that includes a sports game, one of 2021's best indies, and a user-generated, content-focused PS4 exclusive that never got the love it deserved.

Specifically, those three games are PGA Tour 2K23, Death's Door, and Dreams.

Gaming

You can get NBA 2K23 and more with PS Plus this June

Donovan Mitchell in NBA 2K23.

The three games that make up PlayStation Plus Essential's June lineup have been revealed. There are any major console exclusives or no releases included; instead, there's NBA 2K23, a Jurassic Park tie-in title, and an indie game inspired by classic samurai films.

NBA 2K23 needs little introduction, as it's the latest entry in 2K's long-running, annualized basketball video game series. This latest entry stands out from the ones that came before by deepening the controls an AI further, as well as adding a Jordan Challenge mode that chronicles Michael Jordan's career. Beware of some pretty intrusive microtransactions, though.
Also available this month is Jurassic World Evolution 2, a theme park management game that swaps out roller coasters and other festivities for dinosaur-related attractions. The management genre is a surprisingly great fit for the Jurassic Park IP, and this game even provides a bit of story context to fill in the gap between Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World Dominion.
Finally, there's Trek to Yomi, a very cinematic indie game. It's stylized like a classic black-and-white samurai action movie, which makes sense as it's telling a revenge story about a pupil trying to avenge their dying master. If you didn't play this game through Game Pass, it's now available on a Sony subscription service as well.
This certainly isn't the most exciting game lineup, but it still provides a wide variety of gaming experiences. NBA 2K23, Jurassic World Evolution 2, and Trek to Yomi will be available through PlayStation Plus from June 6 until July 3. Make sure you download May's PS Plus games before then too.

Gaming

3 big things I need to see from the next PlayStation Showcase

Peter and Miles from Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

It’s that time of the year again when industry insiders are teasing that a big PlayStation Showcase will happen around June. A third-party focused State of Play happened in 2022, but now Video Games Chronicle’s Andy Robinson and Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb are both suggesting that a more first-party oriented "Showcase" could be on the way sometime during the next month, potentially during the week of May 25.
PlayStation has had a rough start to 2023, with console exclusive Forspoken garnering mixed reviews, the PlayStation VR2 impressing critics while underperforming in sales, and The Last of Us Part 1’s PC port being broken at launch. With only Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 confirmed to be on the horizon for 2023, Sony has a lot to prove during its next showcase. There are three specific things I need to see from Sony if that PlayStation Showcase does come to fruition.
Give PSVR2 purpose
The PlayStation VR2 is an impressive piece of virtual reality technology, but it lacks killer apps outside of Horizon: Call of the Mountain. New game releases for the headset have been slow since its February 2022 launch, which is likely why the $550 headset has underperformed. Sony has opted to mainly relegate PSVR2 to State of Plays or PlayStation Blog posts, but it needs to revitalize excitement for the platform by giving some of its games a spotlight in a big PlayStation Showcase.

Hopefully, there’s more on the way in terms of new AAA VR exclusives from first-party studios, as well as much-demanded ports like Half-Life: Alyx. Already announced PSVR2 games like Journey to Foundation and Synapse could also use release dates. A PlayStation Showcase is the perfect time for Sony to put out a clear road map for PSVR2’s future game library, just as the September 2021 PlayStation did for PS5. Give me a reason to strap on that headset yet again.
Flesh out the system’s 2023 exclusives lineup
PS5 needs a strong lineup for this fall as well. With the exception of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, things look pretty barren for PS5 this year after the launch of Final Fantasy XVI. Several previously announced PS5 games still lack concrete release dates and could arrive in the second half of this year. It’d be nice to get a clearer picture of Sony’s PS5 game lineup for the rest of the year; hopefully, it includes titles like Stellar Blade, the Silent Hill 2 remake, Lost Soul Aside, Death Stranding 2, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.