Sony’s gaming service has changed a lot in recent years, and the price reflects that.
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?
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.
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.
