When it comes to pricing, this console generation has been anything but great. Instead of products getting cheaper over time, just about everything has gotten more expensive. Back in March, Sony raised the price of virtually all of its hardware offerings, including the PS5 and PS5 Pro, by a considerable margin. Now, it’s raising the price of its PlayStation Plus subscription service, albeit to a less dramatic extent.
PS Plus Essential is Becoming a Little More Expensive
Indeed, Sony confirmed on Monday that new subscribers to PlayStation Plus Essential will have to pay $1/£1/€1 extra in select regions starting on May 20. This means that PlayStation Plus’s Essential tier will now cost $10.99 USD / £7.99 GBP / €9.99 EUR for each month or $27.99 USD /£21.99 GBP / €27.99 EUR for every three months. Current subscribers, except for those in Turkey and India, will not be affected by the price hike until their subscription either expires or changes.
Starting May 20, PlayStation Plus prices for new customers will increase in select regions. Due to ongoing market conditions, prices will start at $10.99 USD / €9.99 EUR / £7.99 GBP for 1-month subscriptions and $27.99 USD / €27.99 EUR / £21.99 GBP for 3-month subscriptions.…
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) May 18, 2026
On the surface, this doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal for most subscribers. At the same time, though, this decision is probably going to make Sony a lot of extra money. The company confirmed a while ago that there were 47 million subscribers to PlayStation Plus as of March 2023. It’s unclear how many of these subscribers were members of the Essential tier, but if even only 10 million of them fell under this category, that means that Sony will eventually make around £10 million extra pounds going forward.
Sony has attributed this price increase to “ongoing market conditions,” but that frankly sounds a bit like nonsense. PlayStation Plus is a completely digital service that is owned entirely by Sony; there’s no shipping or manufacturing involved in its distribution. It stands to reason, then, that market conditions wouldn’t really affect PlayStation Plus in the same way as they would hardware.
Nonetheless, this price increase is here to stay, and knowing how things have gone this generation, PlayStation Plus’s monthly cost is unlikely to drop anytime soon, if ever. When it comes to price drops, though, there has been one recent exception to this rule.
PS Plus Gets a Price Hike, While Xbox Game Pass Gets a Price Drop
This PlayStation Plus Essential price hike, as meager as it may be, has come at an inconvenient time for PlayStation, as its biggest competitor, Xbox, has recently dropped the price of its own subscription service. On April 21, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass would both get price reductions effective that day. Game Pass Ultimate dropped from $29.99 USD / £22.99 GBP / €26.99 EUR to $22.99 USD / £16.99 GBP/ €20.99 EUR, while PC Game Pass dropped from $16.49 USD / £13.49 GBP / €14.99 EUR to $13.99 USD/ £10.99 GBP/ €12.99 EUR.
This surprising Game Pass price drop follows the equally surprising price hike that was announced for the service by Microsoft in October of last year. At the time, Microsoft had upped the monthly cost of Game Pass Ultimate across the board by a massive amount. Although the service still isn’t as cheap as it was prior to that price hike, it now contains Ubisoft+ Classics and Fortnite Crew subscriptions. However, it will no longer receive new Call of Duty titles at launch.
Price drops are practically unprecedented in the world of subscription services. That’s why, as silly as this may seem to some, the cost of PlayStation Plus going up as Xbox Game Pass has gone down, makes Sony’s decision look even worse than it already does, from an optics standpoint.
Sony’s Decision to Raise PS Plus’ Price Looks Bad, in Light of Microsoft’s Actions
PlayStation has been breaking record after record with its annual earnings; there is no real need for the platform to squeeze even more money out of its existing users. Xbox, meanwhile, has consistently been struggling to attract players to its platform for several years. Even with its new multiplatform strategy, the platform has continued to find itself between a rock and a hard place. The firm’s revenue rates have still been rather disappointing, considering its massive size.
While it’s easy to argue that the Xbox Game Pass price increase was done out of desperation, rather than kindness, it has at least shown that Microsoft is genuinely listening to player feedback. Just this week, in fact, the company announced that it would start taking suggestions directly from fans to shape the future of the platform through a forum called Xbox Player Voice. Though the suggestions provided by fans may not amount to much in the long run, the fact that Microsoft is even bothering to get their attention is notable on its own.
Sony, in comparison, has seemingly been reluctant to do anything for its fanbase. The price hike for PlayStation Plus has made the platform holder look even more out-of-touch than ever before. At a time when Xbox seems to finally be getting back on its own two legs, after years of shooting itself in the foot, PlayStation has gone and done the exact opposite of what people want from it.
This price hike will probably not affect Sony’s bottom line at all in the short term, but it would be nice if the firm had tried to gain a competitive edge against Xbox to at least some extent.
