PlayStation Plus 12-Month Subscription Price Increased - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 September 2023 / 12,906 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced starting September 6 the price for PlayStation Plus 12-month subscriptions will be increased worldwide.
The Price of PlayStation Plus Essential for a one year subscription is increasing by $20 from $59.99 to $79.99, the price of PlayStation Plus Extra will increase by $35 from $99.99 to $134.99, and the price of PlayStation Plus Premium will increase by $40 from $119.99 to $159.99.
Current 12-month subscribers won't see the price increase until the next renewal date that occurs on or after November 6. However, any changes you make on or after September 6 will update the plan to reflect the new prices.
Here is the breakdown of the new prices:
- PlayStation Plus Essential 12-Month Subscription - 79.99 USD | 71,99 Euro | 59.99 GBP | 6,800 Yen
- PlayStation Plus Extra 12-Month Subscription - 134.99 USD | 125,99 Euro | 99.99 GBP | 11,700 Yen
- PlayStation Plus Premium 12-Month Subscription - 159.99 USD | 151,99 Euro | 119.99 GBP | 13,900 Yen
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Ouch.
This feels kind of baffling given the current market situation.
This is a big price increase, though the number of PS Plus subscribers hasn't really grown, so they needed a way to increase the amount of money coming in from the service. Last reported PS Plus figure was 47.4M, which is essentially where it has been for a while. Sony is also no longer reporting PS Plus subscriber numbers.
At least this price increase isn't as bad as Disney+, which went up by $3 per month last year and is going up by another $3 per month.
It's a surprising price increase given they just overhauled pricing quite recently. Microsoft did recently increase Game Pass pricing, but only after many years without a change. It seems strange to introduce a price, and then overhaul it so drastically not long after.
My guess is more people were opting for the annual pricing than they projected, so their revenues were below expectations.
That's a big increase, $20 on base tier, $35 on mid tier, and $40 on high tier. That makes both the base tier and the mid tier more expensive than the equivalent tier on Xbox's Gamepass, only the high tier is cheaper than Gamepass now, but Xbox high tier includes EA Access and the full PC and console gamepass library, arguably a better bonus than the PS+ high tier offering of access to some older PS2, PS3, and PSP games, so it is understandable that it costs $30 a year more than the PS+ high tier imo.
Extra at $135 isn't too bad compared to Gamepass Console at $132 considering Extra gets you online play too, while you need Gamepass Ultimate at $204 for both games and online.
You are not getting any first part, day one (including all Activision/Blizzard games in some time). That's not really comparable (yes you are responding to a GamePass comparison, but your point is just taking the "price" into consideration saying that it is not too bad.), you need to consider what you get for the "same" price.
Well yes, it's not the exact same deal obviously. Extra gets you games and online, GP Console gets you games only, but includes day one releases, both for about the same price. Which you value more is up to you.
According to many here, only the $204/y Gamepass comes with online.
The $132/y one is 100%
offline.
Just to be clear:
All PS+ services have online.
Xbox Gold: $60 have online.
Xbox Gamepass: $132 don't have online ( is a offline service)
Xbox Gamepass: $204 have online.
That is correct. But the $132/year Game Pass includes day 1 releases, so it's a different value proposition.
Also, all levels of Game Pass have a free option (spend a couple of minutes a day to earn enough Microsoft Rewards to renew at no monetary cost).
I saw their website. It's still a better offering as PSN plus especially when the price increases.im few days time.. the main catch for gamepass for me and many others is the first party day 1 Nd most new third party day 1 which Sony doesn't offer especially day 1 first party..
Wait....
Gamepass comes with online or not?
What's the price for Gamepass + online gaming.
It does if U get the PC one and ultimate according to ms website. The 132 one doesn't but U get all day 1 ms first party titles. f you get the new gamepass core which is the new Xbox live then I get online and selected ms games and they 2-3, new games get added per year
That's the 60 dollar version.
To say it's not comparable due to that is a bit ridiculous. Some prefer to play games when they're new and topical and see a lot of value in that, but many (like myself) would say a game is just as good on day 500 as it is on day 1. If you just want a solid library of games I'd say PS Extra is easily as good an option, depends on which games you're most interested in ofc, but generally they've been adding high profile games by the bucket loads in the last year (except ofc on the month they increase the price lol. Guess they figured people would be mad either way).
I do not think it is ridiculous no. It may differ based on your opinion or preferences but it is not ridiculous. No
The day one thing is certainly about to come into its own with Starfield, and hopefully that trend will continue. Can't say the same over the last few years though. PS+ may not be day one but with Horizon: Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon's Souls, Returnal, Ratchet & Clank, etc it already has a set of current gen titles on it comparable to what Xbox 1st party has even released to date. They're both solid services anyway. I don't know why people take offence to comparing them. What else would you compare Gamepass to if not PS+?
Halo, Gears, Forza, Doom, Wolfenstein, I mean... The list is huge (and will get better with Activision/Blizzard like Call of Duty, Diablo, Starcraft, etc...).
The point of Day one are for new games coming out, of course both libraries already have a good chunk of games; but with GamePass you also get every new first part games... Thats huge (including new IPs like Starfield, Fable, Perfect Dark, Indiana Jones game, etc) .
I was talking about games that came out during this current generation. For day one games to be attractive you need to actually be releasing games. Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite were two years ago. Starfield will be a huge boost yes, and there's certainly potential for the future if they can start releasing games regularly.
Really? Starfield, Infinite, and Horizon 5 are the only games you can remember coming out "this" generation from Microsoft.
Okay, I see where this is going. Let's stop here :) I'm not going to play that little game. Don't even waste your time asking me for the "list of games" and then arguing how much they are not AAA or good or compared to the games from "another" company blah blah blah I'm done here :D
Also, you are def. just pushing away the day-one thing (from Microsoft and third party) like it is not as important as the current library. How convenient
I gave you a list of current gen Sony first party releases on PS+ and you just came back with old back catalogue (which PS+ has too) and unreleased future games, some of which are still far off.
And I know there have been other games, they were just the most notable ones that get people's attention (Wo Long was another AAA highlight although third party). I was simply saying if you're going to argue the $70/year additional cost over PS+ for day one games is so amazingly awesome that the services aren't even comparable, then you do need to bring those first party titles. If you feel that extra $140 over the last 2 years has been covered by what was offered day one (that you still don't own) then good for you.
My saying the two servces are comparable was never meant as some attack on GamePass, so apologies if you've been offended.
No, I'm not going to list all games from Microsoft, you can Google it, if you really do not know what they are. You clearly play the game of "Microsoft has no games" or "They do not exist". I mean, you can see for yourself the list of AAA and all games ALREADY on GamePass (also we are talking about third parties too you realize that right?, not juste first parties on both services).
And to your point, the value of both regarding games that already come out is the same, after that you preferring one plastic box over another or thinking that games from one side are so much better is your personal preference and that's fine.
Now, add to that all future first parties (and actually a lot of third parties) and yes, to me GamePass has more values. I mean this is pretty simple if you do not play the game of "Microsoft has no games and everything coming out of them is mediocre and Sony has only god-like games that are most notable". This is not about games each sides thinks are the best, it is about 'games' in general...
I didn't say anything like that. Just that they were comparable value since PS+ is cheaper, while GamePass has day one games, although that has been lacking in recent years. You're the one writing off PS+ simply for lack of day one games, while not addressing the point that recent PS+ current gen first party offerings have been pretty decent even if they aren't day one.
I'm not writing it off lol. I'm just saying that one has more value in my opinion than the other one. And you are insisting that they are equivalent. Simple as that. We simply disagree I guess.
Well not equivalent. Comparable. One is cheaper, the other has day one releases. As Xbox get out of their self admitted dry spell and potentially release multiple bangers every year then I agree that extra cost could be worth it, although personally my never ending backlog and lack of need for instant gratification lessens that appeal for day one releases.....hence comparable.
Now we are arguing about semantics, let's just leave it there :)
There's not many ps5 high profile on PSN plus. There's forbidden west, miles Morales,Kena and ff7r,. I played those ones minus forbidden west. Most of of those are also on ps4 lol
You need to pay $204/y for Gamepass + online gaming!? For real?
Only if you go through the console UI or Xbox website. You can get 3 month Gamepass Ultimate codes from Amazon US right now for $40 each, or $160 for a year.
Ok. Thanks for the feedback.
Or just spend a couple of minutes a day to earn enough Microsoft Rewards to keep renewing without spending a cent.
You can pay the 60 dollar version for online. That's gsmepass core
Imho, Gamepass with no online is kinda meh... Imho, not fair to compare "offline" service with online service.
So It's more like:
Gold vs PS+ essential:
$60 Vs $80.
Gamepass ultimate Vs PS+ extra or Premium:
$204 Vs $135 or160
However remember GP gives you brand new games at launch, example Sea of Stars and Starfield so the amount paid for the value of the service you are getting has to be taken into account here.
Good point, but remember.
Playstation also gives some day one games like Stray and the very same Sea of Stars you talked about.
Also Playstation gives ownership on 3 (sometimes more) games every month, +36 games every year. While Xbox gives you a 25 games colection on Gold, a colection that is "redundant" when you have Gamepass.
Comparing Day 1 games on PS+ vs. Game Pass is not a good comparison for PS+.
In the same way Games With Gold games became an embarrassment by the end, so too is that the case with the included games with PS+ lately.
Saints Row reboot? Black Desert? These are games that are generally seen as absolutely terrible.
And you don't get "ownership" of the games, as they are yours only as long as you stay subscribed, from what I understand.
PS+ gave the brand new Sea of Stars on launch day as well. Just saying.
Not after the recent price hike..it's going to make it just as much as gamepass ultimate for the PSN extra.. it's not expensive but it's still decent amount in nz
It's not fair to compare Extra at $135 or Premium at $160 vs. Game Pass Ultimate at $204, because to get Extra or Premium that cheap you have to pay for a year in advance. Whereas with Game Pass Ultimate you pay via monthly instalments.
There's a time value to money, so losing all the money up front has a cost (and would be inconvenient for people on tight budgets, or who have something else they'd prefer do with the rest of that money in the early months of a subscription).
For someone who prefers to not pay for the full year up front, the comparison is:
Game Pass Ultimate $204
PS+ Extra $216 monthly ($200 if you pay quarterly)
PS+ Premium $264 monthly ($240 quarterly)
With those numbers, neither Extra nor Premium compares well with Ultimate.
Gamepass is 11$ a month and 132$ a year. That is essentially same as PS plus extra.
Ultimate is 17$ a month and 204$ a year. That is 44$ higher than PS us Premium.
While true, these prices went up after just 1 year. At least GP kept the same price for 5 years. While a price increase was inevitable for GP, I definitely wasn't expecting for PS+ to go up this high, this soon. Not to mention, cloud saves are tied to PS+ whereas Xbox, cloud saves are free. So you're also paying more for cloud saves, which will sting some. And, no day one first-party games.
Good thing a lot of players prefer to play single player games and GP offers a lot of them if you have no interest in multiplayer. Choice is the biggest key. Something Sony does not provide here. You have to pay for multiplayer whether you like it or not. Both sub services have their ups and downs either way. At least it’s not like Nintendo.
I was saying no such thing. I was pointing out that it’s surprising how quickly Sony raised the prices. I personally won’t be surprised if monthly rates will be increasing at some point as well. I’m personally expecting for sub services to eventually crash. You can’t just keep raising prices and expect users to stick around.
If you go through the console UI or Xbox website, yes, but you can always find cheaper than that at retailers. For instance you can get 3 month GPU codes right now for $40 ea on Amazon US, or $160 for a year of GPU, a huge savings over the $204 per year you would pay to setup a recurring subscription through the console UI or Xbox website.
The point is,
Officially Microsoft charges you 204$ a year for gamepass and access to multiplayer through thier own websites and console UI
Lets see so now that the main competitor is starting to show signs of life, adding Starfield, Lies of P and Payday 2 all in the same month to their service...Sony decides its time to increase the price by 33%!
Very weird move. Especially with the reports about subscription fatigue is setting in for the industry.
It seems clear that people are not buying consoles FOR sub services so yeah, why not. PS owners are not going to sell their console and buy an Xbox because of this.
Wow. I JUST bought a year's worth. Like a week ago. Talk about luck lol
Yeah, no kidding!
Gotta pay for that PS5 price cut somehow
Those are some big increases. A couple of dollars would have been fine, but damn they went overboard I think. $80 for Essential is too much in my opinion.
I have been on the fence about subscribing to PS Plus. I mostly play on Xbox, where I have been subscribed for 4 years, with two remaining, through gold to ultimate conversions for very little money. I haven't taken the plunge with PS+ because it didn't seem worthwhile, especially since Xbox is my primary console. But it likely would have happened whenever I ran into a PlayStation game that I wanted to play online. At these increased prices, that's going to be an even more difficult trigger to pull.
Don't care. Never paid a single penny for online in my life and I never will. If you're not happy about how the prices increase now and will in the future, I hope you realize it's 1000% because of the sheeps who paid for years with a smile and saying "thanks" for something that was never meant to be payable in the first place...
That's a big price increase.
Sorted for the next 3 or 4 years so not worrying :)
That is a considerable increase. Not sure how much it will impact the number of subs and profitability.
Wtf and they choose always the worst fucking time to raise prices.
To be fair this is actually very clever from Sony as they dropped the ps5 in price which sure will eat into the profit margins but by doing this means everyone who got a ps5 is gonna scrambling to get ps plus before the increase which then counters the less profit on consoles sold during the price reduction phase
Greedy corporate bastards at PlayStation are making major profits already. Probably want the costs for online gaming as high as possible, before they release their (garbage) live service games. Even if the cosmetics fail in those kind of games, they at least can have higher revenue from PS+. Hopefully they lose around 10 million subscribers though.
Funny fact...
Even If they lose 10M subs, this 33% price is still a great deal for Sony.
Danm, Sony... This shit is becoming too expensive. I Just want to play online!! You forcing me to go PC you @#$#@.
Yes and they are certainly monitoring realtime backlash and will also check if there was any sensible change on the number of subs and most likely this rise will be kept even if much bigger than inflation.
I canceled my subscription. It will last until April 1, then I’m done. There’s no excuse for the nickel and diming PS has been doing for the duration of Jim Ryan’s time at the helm of the brand. That piece of shit needs to be shown the way out.
Disappointing. GP going up, this going up. Services cost more as they compete to pay off 3rd parties for their games to make their services more appealing. Not that I've spent the actual asking price on PS+ since it's inception, discounts and PS top up cards for less than RRP is the norm.
This said, spent more on coffee this month alone than the £10 increase for a year and I know which will bring me more joy. GP, PS+ whatever. It's better value than Starbucks. ;-)
So it's something like 1,67€ more per month for my Essential. Negligible.
Not sure why they decided to announce this so close to Starfields launch..
Why do people think Sony is so concerned about Starfield? It's just one game...
1 game that will sell systems. Raising your prices during these phazes isnt exactly a good way of keeping your customers.
I'm not renewing.
Ridiculous.
And people think big companies are their friends that they have to defend.
Well, screw you too, Sony.
Yikes! That is a bigger price hike than I thought it would be!
I can almost understand the price increases for the Extra and Premium tiers; generally speaking, those ones add more games every month, while taking away some others, but the net effect is that they are always growing in titles available. Increasing the Essentials one by $20, while providing the same base online play + 3 free (older) games per month, seems crazy though. Sony, at the very least, should also substantially increase your cloud storage + number of PS5 game saves that can synced to the cloud simultaneously.
It feels like every decision they've made recently is to see how much they can piss people off and get away with it.
Jim Ryan is hell bent on seeing how far he can take it until he successfully destroys what good his 2 predecessors did to improve the brand’s reputation.
All of his moves have been anti-consumers. And I hate him for it. He’s the worst thing to happen to PlayStation in two decades, from a consumer point of view.
A $5 to $10 increase for essential is still worth complaining about, but understandable. $20? The others are going up a ton too. If I don't find good sales for Premium, I probably have to downgrade to Extra.
Maybe if enough people complain (but of course not with violent threats or similar awful methods) Sony will back peddle. Xbox Live Gold was going to double in 2021 but Microsoft changed their mind quickly after immense backlash.
Can someone here make a clear comparison between Xbox Online+Gamepass Vs PS+ ??
PS+ Essential $80/yr gets you 3 games/month + online, similar to Xbox Core $60/yr which gives a library of 25 games + online. PS+ Extra $135/yr big games library + online, not quite same as GamePass Console $132 which has big games library + day one releases but no online. PS+ Premium $160/yr adds extra classic games library + streaming, while top tier equivalent GamePass Ultimate $204 adds online play, PC, streaming and EA games
Thank you.
Hey if thats what it takes to sell the PS5 for less then fine by me. I dont use the service anyway...
You never play online at all?
Not anymore. Just no games with online that interest me these days.
That's disappointing for sure, had considered getting it eventually but now it's less likely. The discount on 12-months was pretty huge before, but still.
So the essential yearly cost went from 50% of compounded monthly cost to 67%
plus extra from 55% to 75%
Premium from 55% to 74%
A steep increase for sure but still a decent discount over paying monthly. Although such an increase at once makes it seem Sony is handling the yearly pricing as if it were a promotional temporary one vs. a standard one and I don't recall Sony ever mentioning it was temporary or promotional. (Since the premium tier is only a little more than a year old, this increase is way above simple inflation, that's why it looks to me like it's been handled as promotional pricing.)
Boo! I'm going to re-up my Essential subscription before the increase.
I have the premium and I just renewed for a year. good timing :D
Good for you. My backlog is too big to be tempted by all the extra games on Extra or Premium.
Remember you can stack them so if you can, get 2-3-4 years
Ain't that a slap in the face,
🎮 ing is truly turning into a luxury,
That dude who bought ps plus til 2050 or 2070+ is a genius
will probably be 25% by black Friday i will probably top it up then... shame is no cheap upgrade tricks like converting xbox gold to ultimate.. ive got ultimate til mid 2026 and cost £100
yikes
I prefer Game Pass Ultimate. Because I can play all the games on my Ipad Pro, Smartphone, any new Samsung TV (so I can play in my Bedroom, my home theater room, on my friends´house, family´s house, hotel....), and my PC. I don´t like PS+...
