Sony's gaming service has changed a lot in recent years, and the price reflects that.
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Much has changed for PlayStation purists over the past decade and a half: Sony discontinued the PSP and PS Vita; the PS5 went from a penny under $500 to a whopping $650; the company plans to go fully digital in 2028. Through it all, though, PlayStation Plus has remained surprisingly steady in price since it debuted in 2010... sort of. Now a tier-based subscription model, with the cheapest option at $80 a year, the $30 price jump over more than a decade seems like the smallest change the service has seen.
When it started out as a single-tier service, PlayStation Plus was not necessarily an essential add-on. It offered subscribers some free games every month, in-game goods and more, all at a pretty fair cost, but it wasn't required. Since then, it's become somewhat of a must-have for plenty of gamers.
Originally, PS3 owners didn't need a membership to play multiplayer games online, but Sony made it mandatory to subscribe when the PS4 launched. Sure, the Fortnites and Warzones of the world may not require a subscription, but they are already free-to-play. Meanwhile, playing AAA games with your friends online has come with an added cost since late 2013.
So while the entry price has changed a bit, PlayStation Plus has been wholly reimagined dating back to the days of inFAMOUS, Fat Princess and Uncharted 2.
How has PlayStation Plus evolved?
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When it launched in June 2010, subscribers got select monthly games and DLC on the house, early access to select game betas and Full Game Trials; the latter was new at the time and even saved progress and trophies earned along the way. All this cost $50/year, or $18/quarter, with no single-month subscription available then.
By the end of 2016, the service saw a slight price hike but finally became available for a single month, originally costing $10. The other packages rose from $18 to $25/quarter, and from $50 to $60/year. In doing so, the company said, "The new pricing reflects the current market conditions while enabling us to continue to provide exceptional value." Unsurprisingly, this wasn't the last time a similar excuse came around.
In 2022, a little over a year after the PS5 launched, PlayStation Plus changed in a significant way to compete with Microsoft's Game Pass. With three tiers to choose from — Essential, Extra and Premium — Sony delivered a swarm of new features that once cost gamers up to $120/year for the Premium plan, which now costs $160/year.
Earlier this year, Sony said that both one- and three-month subscriptions would see a $1/month uptick due to "ongoing market conditions." The Essential tier, now $11/month, $28/quarter and $80/year, includes all the original subscription's features: discounts, online multiplayer access and free monthly games.
Next up, for $17/month, $44/quarter or $135/year, PlayStation Plus Extra lets players access up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games, including Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered and Dead by Daylight, as well as plenty of other first- and third-party titles.
Lastly, PlayStation Plus Premium is the end-all, be-all, with all the games in the Extra tier, plus streaming access to a massive library of retro games spanning the entire PlayStation lineup, including the PSP. To access this, it'll cost $20/month, $55/quarter or $160/year.