PS+ is going up but not yet

If you already have PlayStation Plus this might be old news with the formal announcement being set out Friday night to most users in Australia, but if you were on the fence about getting a subscription now might be the time to act.

As mentioned on Friday PlayStation Australia (and Europe) notified that as of the 31st of August all new subscriptions and renewals for PS+ fees for new or renewals will be increasing. From the 31st of August at 9:01 AEST the new or renewal subscriptions will be as follows:

• Annually, the price will change from $69.95 to $79.95 per annum
• Quarterly, the price will change from $27.95 to $33.95 per quarter
• Monthly, the price will change from $9.95 to $10.95 per month

This means depending on the type of subscription you have it will be increasing by $10 (annual) or at maximum $12 (monthly). While no real cause has been given to either territory and speculation is running rampant there are a few things we might want to take into account when guessing for ourselves.

For those who don’t know PS+ is a service compatible to the Xbox Gold subscription allowing for online play and access to selected curated games as part of the subscription. In both systems it also allows for access to online multiplayer for most games, this originally was something PlayStation provided for free but was added to be part of PS+ around the start of the PS4 generation.

This is not the first time the subscription has increased with the last increase being in August 2016 and the increase prior to that in September 2015. A big change we have noticed since the last increase was the addition of more AAA games as part of the curated list with Until Dawn being a notable offering last month and this month Just Cause 3.

As we mentioned there is a range of speculation about the reasoning behind the change varied from the addition of PlayStation Now (already a subscription service in the UK allowing for Netflix like streaming of games, a service Xbox recently launched in Australia but PlayStation have not) to rumours about the details of the latest PS4 update.

We believe that this latest increase is just an inflation cost for Sony (given the last 2) and not part of an impending announcement as if there was a reasoning behind the increase it would of been part of the announcement. Also, if new functionality was to be announced it would be part of Sony’s major PlayStation Experience event later this year.

So, should you rush off and buy a PS+ subscription before the prices go up? That is probably entirely up to you. If you took our advice during E3 you might of already signed up for a heavily discounted annual subscription that came with Star Wars Battlefront for free. If not, the subscription increase is less than $12 which may work out to be less than you pay for Netflix per month.

Either way we will be looking carefully at all the releases from PlayStation this week to see if we are given any special reason for the increase or if this is just something we are going to expect annually from Sony.

PS+ Annual, Quarterly and Monthly subscription fees will be increasing as of the 31st of August. Users who are already subscribed will not see the increase until their next renewal.