PlayStation Plus Prices Are Increasing for New Subscribers Starting May 20

PlayStation Plus, Sony’s subscription gaming service for its consoles, increased its price for new subscribers. The company blamed “ongoing market conditions” for the price increase. It’s the go-to explanation for gaming hardware companies, including Microsoft and Nintendo’s increases in pricing for the Xbox and Switch 2 consoles. 

The price for PS Plus subscriptions for new customers will increase by $1 from $10 to $11 for a one-month subscription starting on May 20, according to a post from the official PlayStation X account on Monday. The three-month subscription price will jump by $3, from $25 to $28, on the same effective date. 

Read more: Nintendo Offers Free Games Prior to Switch 2 Price Hike

The PlayStation post focused on pricing that matches the PS Plus Essential tier, which is the cheapest option needed for online play with PS4 and PS5 games and has access to a select number of games each month. On Wednesday, however, all tiers of the subscription services went up in price. 

PS Plus Extra — the midpriced tier with access to a catalog of hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games — was $15 a month but is now $18, and the cost for the three-month subscription went from $40 to $44. The most expensive tier with access to retro games, PS Plus Premium, jumped from $18 a month to $20 a month. Its three-month subscription also increased from $50 to $55. 

The post also says this price change affects new customers, not current subscribers, except for those in India and Turkey. This would include those who have never subscribed to the service and those who canceled their subscription and are looking to restart it. Sony rarely provides PS Plus subscriber numbers, but an Icon Era report from January estimates the number at just over 50 million as of the end of 2024. 

Sony didn’t respond to a request for comment about the specific market conditions. 

Back in March, Sony increased the price of its PS5 console lineup across the board. Microsoft had to do the same with its Xbox consoles. Nintendo announced earlier in the month that it will increase the price of the Switch 2 in September. The most likely reason for these jumps in pricing is the current memory shortage, aka RAMageddon. A spike in demand for computer hardware to run AI data centers has led to huge price increases for both RAM and solid-state drives.