Key Takeaways
- Sony reveals that PS Plus earnings have increased in the past year.
- PS Plus earnings have climbed 18% year-on-year despite negative sentiment around the service’s big price hike in 2023.
- The growth comes from greater revenue per PS Plus subscriber thanks to the price hike and an increasing shift to the service’s Extra and Premium tiers.
Sony’s latest earnings report shows that PlayStation Plus is generating more money than ever. Even though PS Plus underwent a substantial price hike last year, the subscription service’s profit margins haven’t taken a hit as some may have expected.
Back in 2022, Sony introduced a major restructuring to PlayStation Plus by splitting the subscription service into three tiers – Essential, Extra, and Premium. PS Plus Essential offers a rotating set of monthly games, cloud saves, online play, and more, basically operating exactly the same as the service previously did. The costlier PS Plus Extra tier features a Netflix-esque library of hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games, and the flagship Premium tier further adds PS5 and PS3 cloud streaming and emulated classics from the PS1, PS2, and PSP generations.
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PS Plus Premium Adding 5 Games on November 19
PlayStation confirms the five games that are coming to the Premium tier of the PlayStation Plus subscription service in November 2024.
In August 2023, Sony announced a hefty 35% price increase for all PS Plus tiers. Many subscribers lambasted the price hike due to a selection of critically underwhelming PS Plus additions at the time, such as Saints Row and Generation Zero, as well as no new benefits for the service. Despite the complaints, Sony’s recent Q2 earnings report for FY2025 revealed that PS Plus earnings went up 18% year-on-year. The PS Plus price hike went into effect on September 6, 2023, and the report covers data up to September 30, 2024.
PS Plus Subscribers Largely Complied With 2023 Price Hike
Sony cited an increase in ARPU (average revenue per user), chiefly due to the 2023 price hike and an increasing migration of subscribers to PS Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers, as the key driver behind the service’s growth in the past year. This means that the PS Plus price increase did little to shed subscribers for the service or motivate Extra and Premium members to downgrade to the cheaper Essential tier. Since Sony has stopped updating PS Plus subscriber numbers, it’s unclear how many PlayStation users are currently subscribed to the service.
PS Plus is providing a stable base of earnings as sales on a U.S. dollar basis increased 18% year-on-year. This is due to an increase in ARPU (average revenue per user) primarily resulting from a shift to higher tiers of service and the impact of price revisions.
It remains to be seen whether these results encourage Sony to consider future price hikes for PS Plus. Given the nature of subscription services, though, more PS Plus price hikes may be implemented in the future, irrespective of whether the last one helped the service’s earnings or not. Thankfully, PS Plus has been slowly adding more value for subscribers, especially on the Premium tier, by way of the new PS2 emulator and an enhanced focus on classic games. The PS Plus Extra and Premium additions for November 2024 also feature heavy hitters like GTA 5, Dying Light 2, Like a Dragon: Ishin, and more.
PlayStation 5
Sony’s PlayStation 5 is part of the ninth console generation and debuted with a launch lineup that included Demon’s Souls and Astro’s Playroom. The console comes with a Blu-ray disc, although a digital-only edition is also available for a cheaper price.