Sony Defends PS Plus Price Hike, Explains Why It Won't Put Games There Day One

For the first time since the service started I let my PS Plus subscription expire. This price hike is atrocious especially for the essential tier. Sony has also removed the ability for backing up saves to USB for PS5 games so your only option is paying for the cloud backups. Ffs. Very likely my last Sony purchase. Glad Linux gaming is a thing.

What? Seriously??? We can't do USB backups?
- Pure money grab to force you onto PS Plus
  Edit: I was mistaken. You cannot backup PS4 or PS5 game saves to USB on the PS5 either.

Not seeing good reasoning here. "Adjusting to market conditions" means they went as high as they believed they could bear, and the claim that they haven't raised prices in "many years" doesn't justify raising prices by $40 in one jump.

Lots of "consumers" this and that, as if we're all on board with the hikes because we just recognize so much value in the service.

unhappy with any price hike,this me makes me question paying at all.

but i absolutely don't want a gamepass world for sony games where games come out day one on sonypass as they do retail. That's a deathnail for the high quality content that sony provides. The only reason Microsoft can do it is because Microsoft Office pays for it, they are hoping that Office can keep paying for it until the competition is dead. Then they will drop the quality and raise the prices just like every subscription service.

Agreed. We're already there with movies and it's only a matter of time until the games industry follows the same path. The future is enshittified everything.

Their excuse doesn't matter. I'm dropping from Premium to Essential. I might let it expire completely.

The only thing that really bothers me is that a lot of classic games are locked to Premium and can't be purchased.

I dropped mine, which was an easy choice when I realized how little I was using it and how long my backlog has grown on my Steam Deck. If I resubscribe in the future, it will definitely not be at the top level again, and maybe not even for a full year.
- I don't play online much. But I do have a big gaming catalog built up from the monthly games. In the past, the extra discounts have paid for most of the price for me.
  I'll wait until it goes on sale if I do. But honestly, I have a ton of games that I own outright that I need to play through. So I might just drop it until I need it.

Ya I ditched apple, disney and PS plus subscriptions recently because of hikes. Really can't justify the price on this one, its just blatant greed. If they had just kept the price where it I'd probably still have it but I think consumers are tired of being gouged for every last penny. Especially with playstation, they hiked out of nowhere, its a huge increase and theres no additional service.

My premium sub was set to auto renew last week, but had an old cc attached and was flagged. Once I recognized this and fixed, I saw the price increase and was like 'Fuck This'. Just a ridiculous increase, and I in no way play enough ps+ content to warrant this. And thank god that it was flagged otherwise Sony would have just been fine charging me with the increase with no notification. Just bullshit.

Man in my eyes it was only just worth the asking price. I'll stick to keeping an eye out for Black Friday deals or whatever but otherwise I think I can live without it.

I dropped from yearly premium to extra before the price change deadline. I had intended to anyway since I only played a single game on the premium tier by the end of the year. However, if I don’t play enough games in the extra list to justify its new price by the time this year’s sub is up, I’ll drop to essential and leave it at that.

There are actually plenty of games I want to play on extra to justify its price, but they’re always finding their way further down my backlog. So if I just end up not playing them after a year, there’s just no value in that subscription for me. I do play online all the time, though, so I can somewhat justify essential.

One of the two companies is lying, and I'd rather want consumers to get a better deal than a corporation.

Dropped ps+ a long time ago. If you don't play MP, it's really not needed despite all the supposed extra value - it's all a waste in the end compared to buying whatever you wanna play on a sale or such.

I think it depends on the situation. I've been playing games for more than 30 years, and with work and life, I don't have time to pay as much anymore. The PS Extra has so many games I want to play, so I've only played games I've gotten through the service for the past two years. It's totally worth it for me, especially since I don't have to play the newest games the day it's released.