PlayStation Plus gave away more than $1,300 in free games in 2014

The freebie games offered by online services like PlayStation Plus seems like one of the best values in gaming. But is it, really? According to one analysis, the answer is, well, yeah.

Push Square, a U.K.-based, PlayStation-oriented publication, went through the entire year’s worth of free games released in Europe and North America on PlayStation Plus, for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita.

Yes, the well-known catch is that you get to play these games only if your $50 annual subscription is current. But buying in at that amount returned more than $1,300 in games (£960.64 in the U.K.), according to each game’s listed PSN price as of yesterday.

Of course, not everyone owns every platform and some games are not preferable for reasons of taste, but in whole numbers it looks like a solid deal.

You can see a month-by-month, region-by-region breakdown of games at this link. Push Square also ran their Metacritic numbers just to make sure the offerings weren’t crap. They aren’t. Many months had an average Metacritic rating over 80.

I check PlayStation Plus’ Free Games, and Xbox One’s Games With Gold, religiously each month, because hey — it’s a free freaking game. In some cases they’re offering a game I already have on disc, which I can then sell off or trade in. (The Hitman HD trilogy being yet another example.) I call that a bargain. The only drawback is having to clear space on a hard drive. Well, and some of the downloads are rather enormous.