Sony recently made an announcement that raised the ire of quite a few PlayStation 4 owners. Starting September 22, the price of PlayStation Plus is going up in North America. It’s going to be $60 a year, instead of $50. It’s even more expensive if you renew every three months, as that price is going from $18 to $25. It’s a point worth grousing over. But, let’s think about what’s also happening in September.
On September 7, Sony is going to be holding a PlayStation Event. A slim PlayStation 4 model has already been leaked and allegedly has a September 14 worldwide launch date. This increase happens on September 22, a few weeks after two major occurrences. Rather than complaining, we should be speculating. Something is coming. We should be wondering what it could be.
Sony’s PlayStation Network isn’t really the best. It’s been improving, with more opportunities to connect with friends and other players, better messaging, party systems, and game sharing opportunities. The structure still isn’t as good as Xbox Live, though, with outages and minor technical issues. We can’t even change our usernames. With PlayStation 4 Neo on the horizon, maybe we’ll see a step up in service to accompany it. Improved infrastructure could be headed our way and would absolutely justify a PlayStation Plus price increase.
We could also see an announcement regarding the Instant Game Collection. Let’s be honest. The last few months haven’t offered many earth shattering games for PlayStation Plus owners. There’s always a new indie game, which tends to be a gamble, and we’ve been getting dated games like NBA 2K16, Helldivers, The Walking Dead: Season Two, Patapon 3, Freedom Wars, Fat Princess, Siren: Blood Curse, and Echochrome . Not that these are bad games, but they’re absolutely old. Some months, we don’t even get a retail release for PlayStation 4s. Increasing the price of a subscription gives Sony more money, which would let them improve the quality of games added to the Instant Game Collection. It’d make a huge difference.
The longshot is PlayStation Now support. Sony’s been working to improve the PlayStation 3 game streaming service. It’s adding PC compatibility. Offering a full subscription to the rental service is very unlikely, but PlayStation Now also offers a la carte rentals. Maybe we’ll each get two or three seven day rentals each month with our PlayStation Plus subscriptions. It’d be a good explanation for a price hike, while also getting people more involved with this other element of Sony’s services.
The PlayStation Plus price hike may seem unfair now. Sony sprung it on us, hid it away in a past PlayStation Blog update, and didn’t offer any explanation at the time. But, when you think about it in relation to the other things happening in September, it all seems a bit suspicious. Maybe there’s more to this PlayStation Plus price increase than meets the eye.