PlayStation Plus users threaten to cancel subscription as major price hike looms
The (Resident Evil 4) villagers are again sharpening their pitchforks, as a potential PlayStation Plus price rise has gamers threatening to cancel their subscription to Sony's popular service.
While some have accused Microsoft of turning the Xbox Series S into little more than a 'Game Pass machine', Sony's own tiered subscription package has largely struggled to match the success of its biggest rival.
Gamers are some of the hardest to please, but just like Game Pass faced boycotts over complaints of a price hike, PlayStation Plus users are now threatening to put down their controllers and get their entertainment elsewhere.
The gaming market has largely shifted from physical to digital, and we'd be here all day if we opened up the can of worms about when Ubisoft's Philippe Tremblay told us to 'get comfortable' with not owning our games.
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While it's all well and good playing Gears of War: E-Day when it gets a Day One release on Game Pass, Sony's model is slightly different.
As reported by guru3d (via GAMINGBible), Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao noted a 4% year-on-year decline in the Games & Network Services (G&NS) segment when delivering Sony's Q3 2026 earnings call.
While this has been blamed on lower hardware sales and the RAM crisis that's being fuelled by artificial intelligence, Tao warned that it could be passed down to customers in ways other than just increasing the price of the PS5 Pro: "We intend to minimize the impact of the increased memory cost on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the installed base to date."
Tao reiterated that the gaming giant wants to increase its software and network service revenue, which has rang alarm bells about a potential increase in our PlayStation Plus prices.
Even though there was a decline in G&NS, Sony's operating income climbed by 19% as she cited the likes of foreign exchange rates from regional pricing, as well as increased revenue from network services and first-party games.
Further hammering home the idea that PS Plus could soon cost you more, she said that it "significantly contributed to the results of the quarter as the shift to higher tiers of the service continued."
Lambasting the idea of a price hike, things soon turned hostile on Reddit. When a thread highlighting a possible increase was shared, one angry gamer wrote: "I will downgrade from premium if this happens."
Another grumbled: "I'd take a cheaper version of ps+ where I don't even get free games, I just want to play online and with my friends. I barely ever play the free games. Just stop raising the prices it's getting too much for me :(."
A third raged: "I used Plus for at least a decade but the less interesting games and price increases pushed me out. 80$/year for a whole generation is basically doubling the price of the console. That’s madness if you just want to access online. I’m sure enough people will eat up even 100$ so nothing will change."
Already defending a move away from PS Plus, someone else concluded: "It's cheaper to just buy games on sale. I spend less now than I did and still play a ton."
It's true that PS Plus hasn't put its prices up since September 2023, but with that being a global increase of 20-35%, we dread to think how much we could be paying this time around.