Later this week, Sony will make some small pricing adjustments to its one-month and three-month PS Plus Essential tiers, which will see the price increase marginally for new customers.
As I noted in an article overnight, I think this move is designed to make the annual subscription look more attractive, as that’s not changing. Clearly, the Japanese giant wants to stop customers from bouncing around, picking up piddly little subs here and there.
But the manufacturer’s own messaging on this got ratioed pretty hard on X (or Twitter), with prominent user @videotech declaring, “it should be free to play online games without paywalls in 2026”.
And while members already committed to annual subs will be unaffected here, it’s raised questions about whether PS Plus Essential is worth it in 2026.
We ran a poll in the aftermath of the announcement, and just 18% of you agreed it’s good value for money. 19% said they’re not sure, while an eye-opening 64% of you said it’s not worth it.
I actually think the monthly games have been excellent lately, as this year alone we’ve got Nine Sols, Monster Hunter Rise, and Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed – to name just a few.
But I think in this era of ever-increasing prices, there’s a general frustration about getting squeezed. Everything is getting more expensive, including console prices, and I think customers are just getting tired of it – even if the change here isn’t as bad as it initially seems.
Sony also doesn’t help itself at times: cloud saves are advertised as one of the main features of PS Plus Essential, but I think fans expect some form of that feature to be available for free these days.
Perhaps the solution here is to offer a small amount of space for free, and then massively increase the storage for paying members on PS Plus Essential. Would that be a more satisfactory solution?
The concern here is that Sony’s said it’s going to further monetise its existing install base to offset rising costs, so that means we all need to brace ourselves for the squeeze.
And while I understand things like tariffs and memory shortages are out of its control, I think the platform holder needs to strike a balance between its finances and its fans.
It may get away with a few price increases here and there, but if it keeps turning the screw, players are just going to start looking for a better deal elsewhere.
