Mastodawn

Sony raising PS Plus pricing by 33%

https://beehaw.org/post/7481091

Sony raising PS Plus pricing by 33% - Beehaw

Tier Original Pricing. New Pricing PS Plus Essential £49.99 / $59.99 £59.99 / $79.99 PS Plus Extra £83.99 / $99.99 £99.99 / $134.99 PS Plus Premium £99.99 / $119.99 £119.99 / $159.99 33+% is quite a hike, considering that Sony doesn’t offer PS+ Day 1 Launches, unlike Xbox. I hope they start offering their games day one, else people will start to unsubscribe. It’s a bummer, since I like PS+ Extra a lot (don’t get PS+ Premium, it’s not worth it) Also very scummy of them to hide their pricing update behind the Sept PS+ monthly games blogpost [https://blog.playstation.com/2023/08/30/playstation-plus-monthly-games-for-september-saints-row-black-desert-traveler-edition-generation-zero/]

Apeeksiht Aug 30, 2023

Ah yes sell these consoles at discount in one month raise the subscription plans next month. Win-win

ErableEreinte Aug 30, 2023

considering that Sony doesn’t offer PS+ Day 1 Launches, unlike Xbox

They don’t offer them as often as on Game Pass, but there are some day 1 launches on Extra.

As with most subscription models, the value proposition will probably decrease as we move forward (one only has to glance at streaming services to see what awaits us in the gaming space imo…). Bummer, but expected.

sharpiemarker Aug 30, 2023

I share your sentiment. I previously owned an Xbox 360 but had been in the Sony camp for the past decade. For a few months I had a gamepass subscription without an Xbox console and I’m currently a PS+ premium member. The fact that you get day 1 access to first-party titles from Microsoft AND they have a gamepass streaming app on Android and PC is huge. I may have to reconsider the value proposition of my Sony services.

Fapper_McFapper Aug 30, 2023

Well goodbye PS plus it was nice while it lasted. Jesus Christ why does every fucking service have to enshitify? Why goddamnit!

Richie030 Aug 30, 2023

I’ve got premium till May next year, always buy on Black Friday sales, cancelled my renewal, I can’t justify that price. Hopefully everyone cancels their renewal, they get the message and undo the damage.

Omegamanthethird Aug 31, 2023

I’m probably switching from Premium to Essential. I might drop it completely. I really don’t game online much.

whatthecaptcha Aug 30, 2023

Yeah I’m not going to pay any more than what I already pay for PS+ just to help people on Elden Ring. I don’t play any of the shit they give you on PS+ anyway so I’m out.

VentraSqwal Aug 30, 2023

I know it’s become a meme, but because capitalism. I’m surprised gamers more gamers aren’t against it because it only ever makes our favorite hobby so much worse.

NightOwl Aug 30, 2023

I stopped being amazed when console gamers argued on behalf of a billion dollar corporation for why online multiplayer had to be paid.

sarsaparilyptus Aug 30, 2023

I’m not a console owner, are PlayStation owners really giving Sony $60 a year to play online multiplayer? It shouldn’t cost anything in the first place. If Valve or GoG or anyone else started trying to tell me I had to pay them extra to send certain packets through my router, I’d have a good laugh.

ampersandrew Aug 30, 2023

It used to be charging you to send packets through servers that they (in this case, Sony) own, but now that may or may not be the predominant use case in this era of games as a service where the developer needs to run the game through their own servers anyway. The reason Valve, Epic, and CD Projekt don't charge you for it is because you're paying for it every time you buy a game through their stores, which also used to be a less prominent situation on consoles, but now well more than half of games are bought digitally on consoles as well. So PC has taken more and more market share while consoles continue upping the price of their mandatory subscription fees for online play, and one day they'll sit there scratching their heads, wondering where all of their customers went.

NightOwl Aug 30, 2023

I never did. I only got a PS4 for single player exclusives back in the day. Refused to pay for online access and had no interest in paying a monthly fee for rentals when I already had a backlog. And had my PC for everything else.

incendiaryperihelion Aug 30, 2023

While this is true, it does at least provide access to a large library of games 🤷‍♂️ im certainly not thrilled about the increase but when your primary game platform is ps5, what can you do

NightOwl Aug 31, 2023

Sell the PS5.

Teils13 Aug 31, 2023

Large library of games is factually incorrect, you just do not know the scale of games in existence. Far more titles in Steam, gog, itch io, and with emulation this all goes to the square power, the largest library of games is a PC.

nfsu2 Aug 30, 2023

I did for a long time, now its to expensive to subscribe. Not to mention AAA games being a $80 piece of bloated garbage.

Gordon_Freeman Aug 30, 2023

I’m not a console owner, are PlayStation owners really giving Sony $60 a year to play online multiplayer?

It all started with the Xbox, since people did not questioned it and received it with open arms the others (Sony and Nintendo) just copied it. It's just matter of time we end up paying on PC too

Satiric_Weasel Aug 30, 2023

Yo-ho-ho matey.

DoucheBagMcSwag Aug 30, 2023

PCMR

Teils13 Aug 31, 2023

PC gaming is actually a competitive market that would still give players options to escape that (Gog, steam, Epic, itch and humble dumble, hell even Microsoft store and company launchers), it is not guaranteed to never happen because cartels happen, but it is far more hard and improbable than consoles, which are locked-down computers with unbreakable monopolies installed in then, at the mercy of the feudal lord of choice.

strongarm Aug 31, 2023

Agreed, the best attempt was the subscription model for mmorpgs, but even that hasn’t been ubiquitous

belated_frog_pants Aug 31, 2023

Microsoft is seeing to that as fast as they can

ombremad Aug 31, 2023

Microsoft actually tried that during the 360 era with their “Games for Windows Live” service. You had to pay Live “Gold” in order to play online for those games, the exact same subscription required for online gaming on Xbox.

The whole service was so poorly done, so intrusive, and so un-PC, that it didn’t stick with PC gamers.

Nowadays, with quite a few PC gamers already paying for the Game Pass subscription and a rather streamlined experience for PC, I wonder if things would turn out differently somehow.

Omegamanthethird Aug 31, 2023

It was a discussion. And XBox Live was a significantly better experience than PSN. A lot of people were happy to have the premium online experience on PS4 vs the barebones PS3 experience.

To be clear, I had PS Plus on the PS3 when it was just unlocked (free-ish) games and extra discounts. And most of my favorite playstation multiplayer was on the PS3. So I was mostly indifferent to the change.

RxBrad Aug 30, 2023

Multiplayer and three free games added to your library every month.

Concetta Aug 30, 2023

Do you keep them or do you have to be subscribed to play them? Really gonna sway my opinion on this tbh.

Mr_Buscemi Aug 30, 2023

You gotta keep your subscription active to play those games.

At least Xbox let you always keep the Xbox 360 games that were on free each month until they canceled that earlier this year.

Xanvial Aug 30, 2023

If it’s free games (like Fortnite) there’s no need to pay ps plus subscription

dinckelman Aug 30, 2023

If you guys ever wonder why a seemingly modern computer goes for half of what a normal PC costs, this is why. They'll milk you dry with subscriptions like this

JokeDeity Aug 30, 2023

Jesus I’m so glad I haven’t bought a console since the N64. Console players just get non-stop reamed.

kratoz29 Aug 30, 2023

Well, to be fair the N64 didn’t have any online capabilities, but I get your point.

YourFavouriteNPC Aug 30, 2023

Ah yes, another very “for the players”-move indeed

BigVault Aug 30, 2023

I used to own both a Series X, PS5 and have my gaming PC (all in the same room - desktop currently has an i5 13500, RTX 3090 24GB, 4TB of NVME storage & 128GB ram)

Got myself a 5m hdmi lead capable of driving my 4k/120 TV and just ended up using my pc for everything now.

I just switch sources between my monitor and tv when I want to game on the couch. Any mouse/keyboard input needed, I do it on the Unified remote app on my phone and fire up Steam big picture on the tv.

Sold the PS5 and XBOX and ditched two more subscriptions hitting me every month.

No regrets so far.

SuiXi3D Aug 30, 2023

I bought a steam link forever ago and ran an Ethernet cable from my router to it. Works like a charm.

MisterMoo Aug 30, 2023

I bought PS+ earlier this year for the first time ever and regret it even at its current price. It was an experiment but it failed for me.

PenguinTD Aug 30, 2023

It’s a move to test water then, since most people that are long term subscriber usually stack up during sales. I think they are testing how well it might work with their new offers and banking on people forgot to stop renew.

It really sucks cause essential pretty much no longer justified for their pricing at this point. Guess I have to try setup some sort of back up routine for my old save files on the PS cloud before I cancel my subscription.

chepox Aug 30, 2023

Question: If I were to buy a PS Plus Essential subscription code for 12 months, how would I be changing that to premium? Would I be charged after putting my code in? Do I now have two different dates on when Premium ends and when essential ends?

Maestro Aug 30, 2023

If you upgrade from essential to premium then you only pay the price difference for the time left on your essential. So only one end date.

donuts Aug 30, 2023

Save your money, buy a Steam Deck or a desktop PC, play games online with the internet service that you already pay a shit ton of money for, and don't look back. It's really stupid that we allowed game consoles to charge us to play online.

arefx Aug 30, 2023

Steam deck is a great way to get into PC gaming if you don’t have a lot of money or a PC. It can run a lot of games. Enough that you won’t get bored any time soon.

RogueBanana Aug 31, 2023

I would say a pc would be cheaper if ur on a budget as u can easily get a bunch of used hardware and rig it together till you can afford something better for an upgrade

arefx Aug 31, 2023

Eh maybe if you’re hands on and want to take the time to find the deals on the parts. You could just dock a steam deck and plug in a key board mouse and monitor.

bitwolf Sep 11, 2023

Agreed. I built up a nice console PC using a used HP Pavilion Gaming PC.

Threw in a 50$ 32gb ram kit and a 60$ 2tb SSD.

Total cost <450$ and it’s a bit faster than a Steam Deck.

I wouldn’t call this beginner friendly compared to a deck, but the potential cost savings are real.

verysoft Aug 30, 2023

Yeah, if you can, get a PC, they might cost more initially but they pay for themselves in the long run. No reason to own a console.

I bet Steam machines would do better if they were released now.

kratoz29 Aug 30, 2023

Damn, I expect not getting too ripped out in México…

Blue and Orange Aug 30, 2023

Hahaha fuck. I could never go back to console.

BruceTwarzen Aug 30, 2023

I keep forgetting that stuff ain't free

mino Aug 30, 2023

I remember buying a PS3 because playing online was free (Xbox you had to pay).

I absolutely cannot imagine anyone buying a PS5 for $740 (in my Country), then paying $70-90 per game and THEN paying a monthly subscription to be able to play multiplayer…

What the actual hell… at this point the argument that a console is cheaper than a gaming PC is utterly wrong.

It’s baffling and quite sad that a lot of people are paying this much…

red Aug 30, 2023

The subscription also includes free games, though

Aradina [They/Them]Aug 30, 2023

Only if you continue paying. You lose access when you stop. So, they’re not free, you pay monthly for them.

Whirling_Ashandarei Aug 30, 2023

Those are the catalogue games, but you also get the monthly free games that once claimed are yours. They are considered “purchased” I believe.

ScoobyDoo27 Aug 30, 2023

Those games are not purchased. You lose them when you unsubscribe to ps plus.

Whirling_Ashandarei Aug 30, 2023

Yep, just looked it up to make sure and I’m wrong. Wow, that sucks. I was already halfway out the door on my way to PC, this just confirms that.

Gordon_Freeman Aug 30, 2023

To have access to those "free games" you have to pay first, so how come they are free when they are asking money for them?

Free is this:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/hero_of_the_kingdom_ii

No payments required and you keep it forever

Hero of the Kingdom II

Sail to the farthest islands to save your sister and defeat pirates. You and your si

GOG.com

NightOwl Aug 31, 2023

“rentals” since they cease to work once the subscription lapses. Just like how Netflix isn’t giving away free movies and TV shows.

busydoinnothin Aug 30, 2023

I’ve been paying for premium for the last year (monthly, not so bright here) and I haven’t used any of the offerings of streaming or demos. I’m def lowering my sub to extra (I def play from the catalog) but wondering if I should just pay for the year subscription now or wait for any discounts that may happen.

I think I read we have til Sept 6 to pay for current prices, so I figured I’d just get the year today. Any thoughts?

DoucheBagMcSwag Aug 30, 2023

Does Sony really think they can charge more than fucking Game Pass???

shiveyarbles Aug 30, 2023

It’s a good thing we all got 33% pay raises… Right?

MrGerrit Aug 30, 2023

I buy the subscriptions for ps+ ans nso during black friday. There is usually a sale going then. Wish i could have stacked up some.

doctortofu Aug 30, 2023

Yeah, but recently PS+ subscriptions only get a around 20% discount on Black Friday, and Sony is hiking the price up by now than 30, so it’s more than likely that the discounted price is still going to be higher than the full price now…