If you're a fan of Sony's PlayStation Plus subscription service—which doles out free monthly downloads for the company's various systems and enables online play on PS4 games in exchange for an annual fee—you might want to lock in your next annual renewal of $50 per year pretty soon.
That's because the annual fee goes up to $60 (or CAD $70) starting September 22, which is exactly one month after an announcement posted on Monday. Sony took an odd approach to making this announcement: the company edited the news into a late-July alert about the freebies PS Plus members would receive in August. The post did not receive an updated headline, despite the official PlayStation Twitter account linking to the post once it had been edited.
The announcement explained that the price hike—the first for the service since its launch in 2010—is thanks to "current market conditions." Since the post neither linked to any financial or market analyses nor announced any new features coming to PlayStation Plus, Ars is tempted to assume that those "current market conditions" are little more than "we think people will grin and bear the price hike."
Monthly memberships will remain $10 in the USA, while three-month subscriptions will go up to $25. The announcement doesn't mention when or how prices will go up for pre-paid subscription cards sold at brick-and-mortar retailers. But if you want to enjoy the lower price now, you should probably pick up one of those codes before prices change. After that, you can apply what you pay toward a current PS Plus subscription.
These prices put PlayStation Plus on par with Xbox Live Gold's $60 annual subscription; Microsoft's own price hike from $50 to $60 came in 2010. Microsoft took another few years before offering its own free-download offers to paying subscribers.
By: Sam Machkovech (ARS Technica).
Photo: Play Station Lifestyle.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, FLAGSHIP RECORDS.
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