PlayStation Plus Joins Xbox Game Pass In Raising Subscription Prices

Woah I mean unless Sony start releasing a lot of day one games this is a rip off I mean sonys exclusives wipe the floor with xboxs but gampass has day one games coming in constantly and is great value for money I think all these subscription service are getting out of hand now

Seeing as this is a UK based website why do you insist on quoting the prices in Dollars rather than pounds?

Or if you really must, at least quote both along with Euros

Am I missing something or is everyone just trying to push people to PC for gaming.

It is bad enough you have to pay the just play online. But raising the prices to do what is free elsewhere is a joke.

@Member_the_game because the £ increase is smaller £20. Doesn’t sound as bad then to get the fanboy rage going.

Literally 0 reason to have this on an Xbox site. Except to cause arguments in comments.

Both companies suck for raising prices at a time many are struggling.

@FraserG

Thank you for the info and explanation, makes it easier to understand 😃

I'm laughing at the title. I mean it IS accurate because Xbox did this first, but to say PSPlus "joined" Gamepass is putting it too lightly. The price increase for GP was, what, less than 5 dollars? But what PS is doing is just too much.

At least when xbox did it I thought Starfield will be coming shortly to make it worth the extra so I stayed subbed. What is the incentive to stay subbed to Sony's service?

Doing this the same day that Starfield launches into gamepass without bringing any sort of new game or perk to their service is kinda shocking.

I hated Microsoft's price increase - right after they had a fantastic showcase. BUT - it is hard to argue that the value of pass has been getting better as time has gone on - the release cadence, of super solid games, going on right now is almost too hard to keep up with.

The timing on Sony is atrocious. They are offering no additional value, on an already inferior product, with a 25% price increase. I think after a lackluster Spiderman releases...and they really have nothing afterwards...people are going to question their loyalty to the brand. Sony's 2023 has been the worst year in gaming that I can think of in a decade or so.

@Nighto4 both end up with similar price increases PS extra went up around £1.50 a month, premium about £1.75. GPU went up £2 a month.

GP offers more day 1 (Sony do the odd one) but Sony has a bigger catalog of games. GP has conversion, but Sony do yearly discounts. At full price Premium is £120, GPU £130ish.

Overall honestly there is so little difference value wise between the two

HOLY HELL!!! And people got mad cuz GP & GPU got $1-2 increases!! This is outrageously bogus! Xbox Live/GP Core is still $60 a year for multiplayer, now PS+ Essential is $20 more.

I have PS Extra through 2/25 but will dump it after that. GamePass is a better fit with the focus on newer games. PS Extra has some good stuff but it’s mostly older games I’ve already played or had no interest in.

The upcoming GamePass lineup is amazing and hope the bangers keep coming!

Queue some obligatory bashing of the other side in 3...2...1...

Jokes aside. Both are going to be squeezing what they can out of playerbases and hide behind "so we can continue our good service"

Roughly translates to "we made some investments and need to recoup money in the short term so our shareholders dont spank our backsides"

@Jaxx420 subscription numbers are plateauing on both Xbox and PS. Pushsquare has an article on it) So it looks like the plan for both is to increase revenue from their existing members.

Not rocket science - any company will artificially set the price lower to entice you in and then raise prices until they reach the point of when you start thinking of canceling. The kicker though is that you lose your “digital” copy until you pay again…

Going to unsubscribe from PlayStation Plus when I can. It's just not value for money. The games on the extra tier tend to be a few years old and on sale anyway. The essential tier is getting quite expensive for what it is, especially when most of the multiplayer games I play are on Xbox.

Xbox Game Pass, even with the higher Ultimate tier, is way better value than PS Plus with the main reason being day one exclusives. Can't see myself unsubscribing anytime soon, even if there are a few more price increases.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner there is that too. But even over in TV streaming prices are going up. Amazon Prime also added caveats to free delivery. Its all to recoup money for investors. Capitalism as usual is rife.

@Jaxx420 I dumped Amazon Prime a year ago and have never felt better. I wait until I have $25 worth of stuff. They try to get my to re-sub by telling me the item won't come for a few weeks. Without fail, I get an email after purchase telling me the item is coming in a few days - usually the same as Prime. Amazon has become so efficient with delivery they forgot how to to deliver it slow.

I've dumped all of my teevee subscriptions. the free ones like Tubi and Pluto are now just as good as the premium ones. Pluto has local news!!!

my boring point - these subs are showing less value every day - better options abound. gamepass is still a value to me. This Sony thing is a joke. They are the worst of the bunch by a large margin. Even Nintendo's is miles better than Sony. Why people continue to support that ugly monstrosity is beyond me. Nostalgia I suppose.

@Lightning720 gamepass Is great value with the day one games and lots of them at the minute I know a lot aren't particularly great but they are still day one

@Kaloudz 36p for a Mars bar? Those sound like amazing times. Love me a Mars bar.

@Kaloudz don't we measure inflation here on the price of a Freddo? Remember when they were 10p!

Where are our resident PlayStation fans to criticise this? Those are not small increases.

These price are not comparable at all

@Jaxx420 @Kaloudz when penny sweets were well actually a penny.

@Fenbops it’s not getting much love over on pushsquare put it that way!

@PsBoxSwitchOwner it's not getting much love anywhere thankfully.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner oh aye getting my 50p pocket money and scranning 50 cola bottles from the local newsagents on a Saturday. Those were the days!

@Cashews some of them are more value than others but i dont think any are justifying the sharp increases at all tbh.

Not exactly sure why this was even posted here, but it is a shame that prices continue to go up across the board! I guess that's the cost of luxury items.

I do hope Microsoft holds firm with its pricing; but I have a feeling once the first-party titles start to release more often, we'll see another increase in price on this side of the aisle.

@Kaloudz they do indeed but I’ve never had one! It’s meant to be surprisingly delicious, the light crisp of the batter and the gooey inside from the Mars bar 🤤 you’re making me want one.

@Jaxx420 Penny cola bottles were good but terrific turtles were king 🤤

The premium tier is an absolute joke with how little they have done with classics. Same for essential which is basically online play. Hate subs all around and if my multiplayer days end soon, getting off subs alltogether.

@Kaloudz You haven't lived until you've tried a battered mars bar. It's so wrong but tastes so good.

@FraserG I predict around 100$-110$ Canadian for Essential, insane

@PsBoxSwitchOwner
I think this is Ultimately the biggest driving factor, both sub models have peaked, and this is the only short term revenue model that will increase profits

@Fenbops Pushsquare has great articles and reviews to. Broaden the gaming worldview, except for Nintendo Life, scary place that

@CallMeDuraSouka To me it is painfully obvious that Microsoft is doing what they can to increase value - to get over the "plateau" that the NPD and some random blogger have deemed it.

They have acquired companies, they have increased the release schedule of big name (and smaller name) games, they have integrated Twitch support, etc. They have made many missteps but at least are attempting to add value.

You get over the hump. Autumn will tell you whether or not it was successful. By January 1 you can definitely say if it was successful or not.

I recently purchased a ps5 and had been getting some use out of my ps plus sub downloading Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, etc., but not sure I will renew. I subbed for a year last black friday, so will have some deciding to do. It comes out to about an extra 3 dollars per month, I think, at my tier. Not a ton, but I game more on xbox. Or did, before getting the 5, now it is pretty well split

@Jaxx420 I remember when a packet of Polos were 5p. Damn, I feel old thinking about it.

After everything that's gone on these past few months, I think it's a safe guess that when Gold is replaced by Game Pass Core, the 3:2 upgrade conversation to Ultimate will be gone.

Can buy PS+ extra on Ebay for £50 for the 12 month. Can also buy Game Pass at £20 for month 12. This great bargain.

kinda funny when nintendo has the best pricing for just wanting to play online with no other fluff really.

that price hike is steep...i haven't had PS+ for years and watching it just increase like that only solidifies me not wanting to ever go back to it. i play online more than i do offline because i only get so much free time a day and i tend to just do a quick something here an there till my days off so anything not F2P on my ps5 just never gets used anymore.

feeling like its about time to fully move away from playstation for me.

@Nalverus well they have some fluff. They have classic titles that never go away - unlike Gamepass and Sony's crapfest the offerings haven't been taken away. Not only but they are better than remakes - because they add online, pause features, rewind, quicksaves etc.

@Kaloudz Corporate greed is what is mostly driving the inflation and is not just industry wide. When they get greedy I stop giving them my money. They try to recoup it on the remaining consumers and that isn't what we call customer appreciation. I'll never pay another penny for these services on any platform until they make them affordable for all. This looks like they hate their base and could care less.

@Cashews and i'm guilty of being on a expansion pack family plan lol. we split the cost and i play them weekly.
but most people are still unhappy with their offerings because of how slow they even release them over there.

still. its all a matter of out of pocket costs for the few things we want in any of them. we're paying for the whole thing rather than the one or two things we want out of it.

@Nalverus I don't listen to those people. I don't consider those people very smart.

You could just take the good games on Nintendo + - and you'd have 1000s of hours of not only good games - but games considered the greatest video games in the history of the industry.

I have expansion as well and bought all of the classic controllers except the NES one ;;;>.> even the Master System controller!

@Moonglow I mean Sea of Thieves is a live service game designed to be played for the long run while the other games you listed are one and done, also there's a good chance many played them on PS meaning they never bothered to play them on Steam. I'm willing to bet though Sea of Thieves doesn't come anywhere close to Spider-Man's sales.

As for day 1 games well here's the thing many people myself included like owning games and its why i paid £100 for Starfield despite being a GP member. Of course PS fanboys downplay the day 1 releases but i'm sure many just don't have interest in "renting" games.

@Cashews ...ditto. i have all the classic controllers. nes, snes, n64, and gen/master. doesn't feel right otherwise considering i grew up on these things.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Something like we’re not getting Starfield and we have to pay more? Got to pay for those “popular” multiplayer games …

Sony rise their price, Microsoft rise their price, its almost like they in it for the money but thankfully we have the power of voting with our wallets. If a service offer me value I'll subscribe, if it doesn't than I won't as in the case of PS+, if Sony ever decides to have day one releases on first party I will reconsider.

I’m not shocked. I said a long time ago (too lazy to dig it up) that I bet Sony regretted even offering yearly discounts on their Extra and Premium tiers.

I am a bit shocked they dared bump the price on the base plan, though. Xbox Game Pass Core is still the direct competitor to that and now is $20 cheaper. If you want to play CoD soon, not only will you pay a lot more for the game (since it won’t be on game pass) but also have to pay $80 a month to just hop online?

But I’m sure Sony fans will get a second job to pay for this.

Hey Jim Ryan, we have no PS exclusives on our subscription service on day one and Microsoft is currently taking over the world of gaming. What should be do? Jim "let's raise the price of our subscription service." Lol. Idiot.

Europe and America are getting a really bad deal. I have a Singapore PlayStation Plus Premium subscription and the price is SGD104/£60/$77 for 12 months. Includes Games Catalogue, Classics Catalogue, monthly games and Ubisoft Classics. The only thing it doesn’t have is cloud streaming.

@somnambulance i have the money to keep them going. But i don’t play my PS much. Only their 1st party games and most of them have zero multiplayer. I do like the cloud saves that comes with it. But i can live without it. On the Xbox side i use GP to try games out and see if i like them, if i do i buy them digitally. But i have to have GP core at least for online play cause i do play my Xbox online just about daily. Me and a friend grind nightmare dungeons in Diablo 4 a few nights a week. I don’t get much of a return on investment on anything Sony as again it’s not my main played machine and that reason is solely based on the controllers. They have a layout that simply hurts my hand to no end and makes me slower and less competitive in shooters. Nothing wrong with the console, i just can’t do their controllers.

What concerns me is that we still don’t know the annual price for Game Pass Core in GBP. Is it £50 as Gold currently is? Or is there going to be a stealth price increase to £60, which would in fact match this new PS Plus Essential pricing. Microsoft, AFAIK, has only announced official pricing in USD. Sure, a price increase of £10 per year would hardly be the end of the world, but I just dislike the lack of communication and transparency from Xbox on this topic.

@themightyant I can only find the official Xbox Wire blog post confirming the $60 US annual price tag staying, but I couldn’t find any mention of annual UK pricing at all from any official source. I could be looking in the wrong places, but they aren’t making this information easy to find.

@Cakefish Microsoft haven't announced the full lineup for Core either.

The only thing I don't like...

"This price adjustment will enable us to continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits to your PlayStation Plus subscription service."

No, you could continue that without increasing the amount, but Xbox increased the amount they're charging so PlayStation must as well, because otherwise where is the competition?

With the greatest of respect, they should be f**king honest rather than lying about it, at least then they might be able to save some face.

@themightyant They raised prices on console hardware recently in most regions aside from US, so I’m just concerned about a repeat scenario with Game Pass Core. I’m sure you’re right though and I’m just being overly paranoid here. I just wish they’d be more communicative to their customers outside US in situations like this y’know? As much as we can dislike Sony raising prices on PS Plus here, at least they listed multiple currencies in their blog post to provide clarity to folks outside USA!

@somnambulance yeah I understand that. I think the increase on the Sony side is questionable, but we don’t know what they have in store for the service. So if it stays as is, that was a big ask. If it get’s better and add’s more content than it very well could be justified. My worry is Sony is and always has been profit hungry from PS. It’s a money maker for them and their most desirable product they sell. So they can do price increases there more easily than other Sony branded products.

@Dan1283 the only exclusive that has "wiped the floor" has been days gone and maybe ghosts of tsushima if it comes to pc and i play it, every other exclusive I'd argue is mediocre and caters to specific audience i.e marvel watchers/people who hate a certain rich guy.

@somnambulance thats a fair point and one i even ask myself. So i get it. If they aren’t giving you value i would say cancel it. See if you felt like you really lost much of anything and make a decision a month or two later.

With this huge 33% increase something like the new Read Dead port being added to the extra and premium tiers in September would ease the pain. Instead Essential gets the year old low rated Saints Row game while, to-date, extra and premium gets nothing more than that low rated Saints Row game.

@Kaloudz I honestly think that this represents a smaller democratic than you think. That's a lot of money to spend to rent games and never own.

@Kaloudz I'm nearing 50 years old and work a lot. I often have several games I juggle depending on time I have to play games. I do like to revisit games. I just need a few that I like. Not a giant library of games may not play. Picking up games on sale saves a lot of money. I do think Game Pass is a great feature. I refuse to pay for any Sony products so PlayStation Plus doesn't apply to me. With inflation everything goes up, income can't keep up so you have to make cuts somewhere and when every Game Pass game I play I own, I just don't see the point in paying for the service.

@Kaloudz The future is definitely looking a lot better than the last two years.