You better stock up on some PlayStation Plus subscription cards while you can still get them for $50 USD or less. Beginning on September 22nd the cost of a 12-month PlayStation Plus subscription will cost $60 in the United States and $70 in Canada. A three-month subscription will now cost $24.99 in the United States. There are currently no plans to raise the price of a PlayStation Plus subscription in Europe. This marks the first time that Sony has increased the price of the service since it launched nearly six years ago.
Strangely enough, Sony announced the price increase by updating a three week-old post on the PlayStation Blog which lead to a fair amount of fan backlash judging by the comments left within the thread.
“The new pricing reflects the current market conditions while enabling us to continue providing exceptional value to our members,” wrote a Sony representative in the announcement.
This increase will put PlayStation Plus at the same price as Xbox Live Gold. Microsoft increased the price of their own service to $59.99 back in 2010.
PlayStation Plus began in 2010 as an optional program which offered benefits such as automatic system updates and trophy syncing but the most heavily emphasized benefit was access to a selection of games every month. Once a game was “claimed” a user could play them as often as he or she wanted so long as their Plus subscription was active. In 2013 PlayStation Plus was required for online PVP features in most PS4 games.
