Sony has made good on its threat to increase the price of PlayStation Plus, but it won’t currently say how much it’ll be for a whole 12 months.
With the PlayStation 6 becoming increasingly impractical, due to the rising cost of memory, Sony is essentially stuck in the current generation, unable to move on from the PlayStation 5, even as its sales begin to fall – as is normal at this point in its lifecycle.
Rather disturbingly, Sony’s answer to this is to ‘monetise’ existing console owners more. Last June, PlayStation boss Hideaki Nishino said ‘the PlayStation Plus service offers great value for our players, and we will continue to add more value and adjust our pricing strategy in a dynamic way to maximise profitability.’
He wasn’t lying either, as today on X it was announced that prices for PlayStation Plus will go up on May 20, i.e. this Wednesday. You won’t have to pay more if you’re already subscribed but you will if you change your subscription plan or let the current one lapse.
Frustratingly, the only actual prices Sony has given are £7.99 for a one month subscription and £21.99 for a three month subscription. Although they don’t actually say, that can only be PS Plus Essential, because the other two tiers are already more expensive than that.
No indication is given of how much a 12 month subscription will be or what kind of price rise PS Plus Extra and Premium are looking at.
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The price rise for Essential is £1 for one month and increase of £2 for three months. That’s a 10% to 14% increase, so you’re probably looking at around £65 to £70 for 12 months of Essential, up from the current price of £59.99.
As a reminder, you need Essential in order to play most paid-for games online, so this is going to create some difficult decisions for gamers starting to feel the pinch.
The idea of subscription prices being increased is not limited to PlayStation or even video games, but that doesn’t make it any easier for anyone.
Console manufacturers have been desperately trying to keep their prices down, in the light of tariffs and the ongoing memory crisis, but even Nintendo recently admitted they were going to have to increase the price of the Switch 2.
They still haven’t said by how much in the UK but previous to that they’d tried to increase the price only of inessential peripherals, including controllers and webcams. Subscriptions are also a similar target for companies looking to keep profits up without increasing the cost of their key product (or at least not again).
As understandable as it is, to some degree, none of this is going to go down well with gamers, who are continually being asked to pay more for products, when traditionally the cost of hardware is expected to decrease as the generation goes on, rather than increasing.
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