Sony president Hideaki Nishino has stated the company is open to adjusting the price of PlayStation Plus in the future, as the company aims to “maximise profitability”.
The comments come as part of a discussion between Sony CEO Hermen Hulst and president Hideaki Nishino on PS Plus and the company’s future. Discussing Sony’s subscription service, Nishino stated: “We will continue to add more value and adjust our pricing strategy in a dynamic way to maximise profitability.”
This statement, while not an indication that a price increase is necessarily on the cards, is essentially stating Sony will ensure the service will prioritise profitability going forward. Indeed it’s a statement Sony has been aligned with for some time, given the spread of price increases PS Plus has received over the years.
There was a European price hike back in 2017, and as recently as 2023 PS Plus saw a global price increase, which Sony justified by stating it could “continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits to your PS Plus subscription service” as a result.
In the accompanying presentation, Hideaki noted some key shifts in PS Plus profitability over recent years. In 2024, 22 percent of PS Plus subscribers were paying for the most expensive PS Plus Premium, compared to 17 percent back in 2022.
PS Plus Extra, the next in terms of price-per-month, also saw an increase in subscribers, rising to 16 percent of subscribers compared with 13 percent back in 2022. In addition, in 2024 PS Plus made up 14 percent of total PlayStation revenue, an increase of only one percent from 2022.
What we can glean from these statistics is that while overall growth for PS Plus as a service remains slow, those who are subscribed are gradually forking out the cash for the pricier tiers.
Whether this is due to these subscribers increasingly believing the increased price point is worth it for the selection of games provided, a shift in attitude in favour of subscription services like PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass, or some alternative cause remains an interesting point of discussion.
A few years ago, former head of PlayStation Shuhei Yoshida stated that services like PS Plus should be used to extend the life cycle of games, and that the company still believed in premium games getting a standard release at launch. Maybe this approach has resulted in growth for PS Plus over the years?