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- I feel like I can't go two weeks without talking about another controversy around PlayStation. This time around, they've raised the price of PlayStation Plus by a dollar. Wait, that's it? That's just a dollar. Why are we making this video? And of course, just a few hours after we finished filming this video, Sony actually pushed the price hikes live, plural. So initially when they announced it, they positioned it as a $1 price hike on the Essential tier. However, when they actually went live with it, it also came with a $2 price hike on the middle and the upper tiers of PlayStation Plus. So everything I'm about to say in this video,
double it, quadruple it. Why the hell not? And the real kicker is, if you're an existing subscriber, there's no change at all. This is just a price hike for all those suckers who aren't subscribed yet. Now, my first instinct when I heard the news was that who cares? But the more I thought about this, the more it really started to feel like something different than a normal price hike. Because here's the catch. If you are on a grandfathered plan, that rate is only yours as long as you never cancel, you never pause, you never let it lapse, because the second you do, you come back at the new price, whatever they decide to charge at that point.
This feels less like a tiny price hike that we're all numb to at this point and more like the beginning of a trap. A very, very clever one. Now, to be fair, Sony has had a rough year. We spent a lot of time covering the RAM Crisis and how it is driving up the prices of everything in the gaming space. So Sony at this point have had to raise prices twice. And in March, the PS5 hit $650, and the PS5 Pro was sitting at a ridiculous 900 bucks. Sales are down a full 46% year over year at this point, and the PS5 is falling behind the PS4 in overall sales. So under serious pressure from investors to right the ship on the gaming business,
raising the price of PlayStation Plus subscription that you basically need to play online feels like a no-brainer. If you need money, you have tens of millions of captive- I mean gamers, who are probably gonna be grumpy about a price hike and then move on. It's almost like every company in 2026 has the "due to rising market conditions, we have to adjust our price" as an excuse for every one of these price hikes. But changing the business model, or at least testing it as the way they're doing it here with grandfathering people into existing rates and only charging new subscribers feels like it opens up a whole can of worms.
Here's the analogy that won't leave my head. Imagine you're renting an apartment. It's maybe not great. There's a weird stain on the ceiling that's been growing for a year. The elevator breaks every third Tuesday, and your upstairs neighbor seems to exclusively play Wii Bowling at 3:00 AM. But the rent is just low enough that you put up with it, and then your landlord raises the rent. Not by a lot, just a little bit, but you know it's enough to maybe think about leaving. But then wait a minute, how much are new tenants paying?
Whoa, well, that's a lot more than your rent. Well, you're grandfathered into a good deal as long as you never move. Now in this scenario, leaving feels crazy. 'Cause if you do move, you're paying way more for the same kind of place. The landlord doesn't need to make the apartment better 'cause where are you gonna go, pay double somewhere else? I don't think so. What seems like being nice is arguably just making leaving more expensive. You're not paying for the apartment anymore.
You're paying to not lose your rate. Now I wanna be clear, it's early days. I think they're just testing this, but I think this is exactly what PlayStation Plus are doing here by introducing price hikes for new customers and grandfathering existing people in on their original rates. Now I know plenty of people who hop in and out of subscriptions, right? I mean, just think about it. How many subscriptions do you have at any one time? Probably more than you want. So maybe you just want PlayStation Plus for a few months. Or maybe you just wanna game during the summer. So normally it's easy, just pause subscription,
save some money, and then the moment you're back in, oh wait, what? I have to pay a higher price now? What? Now, sure, it might only be a dollar, but if this works, you've gotta assume that they're gonna keep cranking that dial, right? It's a dollar more today, but it's $3 more next year, $5 more the year after that, right? Like, you kind of see where this is going. So the logical move is you stick around to not lose your price. You just leave that autopay on, which is exactly what they want. This is what's called a dark pattern. (voice laughing) You have activated my trap card.
My dark pattern card will keep you trapped in subscription hell for four turns. I'll now place four Chocobos in defense mode. No, Kuribohs, Kuribohs! No, not Chocobos! (Austin laughs) - You know, it's fine. Keep it in there. - Yeah, you're right. That was almost cool. (Austin laughs) - Dark patterns, also known as deceptive design, are user interfaces and user experiences meticulously crafted to trick, manipulate, or nudge you into doing things you might ordinarily not want to do.
Dark patterns exploit human cognitive biases, like our tendency to skip text, our desire to avoid friction, or our fear of missing out, all to benefit the company at the expense of the consumer. And it's not exactly new, but I'll say that companies are getting really, really sophisticated at taking advantage of these. The elephant in the room here is absolutely what's been going on with Microsoft. So you probably remember last October when Microsoft cranked Game Pass Ultimate pricing from $20 to $30 a month, a full 50% hike overnight. And the reaction was, shall we say, not great. Tons of subscribers canceled.
Xbox hardware revenue has continued dropping like a rock. I mean, the whole thing became this perfect analogy for everything that was already wrong with Xbox. Now, I don't think Microsoft did this because they're cartoon villains and they're tying your credit card to the train track of subscription fees and twirling their mustache and laughing. I mean, my understanding is that the situation was corporate Microsoft demanded the Xbox team to hit a much higher profit margin, supposedly around 30%. And when you can't push sales up, the only lever you've got left to play with is to raise the price.
Then Xbox hit a massive reset button earlier this year. Phil Spencer retired. Asha Sharma stepped in as the new CEO, and one of her first moves was to cut pricing. Game Pass Ultimate came down from $30 to $23. Finally, someone did the thing and actually lowered the price of something. But wait, hang on. $23? That's still more expensive than the $20 price this was before all this, right? And they pulled day-one Call of Duty out of the deal at the same time. So while there's no doubt that this is better than $30 bucks a month,
ultimately we end up paying more, getting less, unless you really like that Fortnite Crew, and somehow everyone is stoked about it. It's a hell of a magic trick. But corporate machinations aside, here's the part I actually want to focus on. The reason this price cut happened at all is because the price hike was visible, and presumably someone took a look at the dashboard of Game Pass cancellations. People could see the price hike. They could complain about it. They could cancel, and they did.
Microsoft listened kind of because they had no other choice. This is the way that things should work. When a company pushes too far, consumers should be able to push back. Which brings us to Sony, because I think Sony, watching all of this happen, learned a very different lesson. A $10 price hike? What are you, crazy? People hate that. Terrible idea. But what if, and we're just floating this idea here, what about a small hike on no one at all besides "future customers?" What if the price increase is so quiet, it's so targeted that there's nothing for anyone to do besides grumble on Twitter for a minute and move on?
Existing subscribers, we love you. We're keeping your special rate protected. There's nothing to see here. But meanwhile, every new subscription from now until forever pays more. And every existing subscriber, they probably think twice before ever canceling. We're just a bunch of frogs chilling in the pot with a boil so slow you don't even notice it. Now this stuff absolutely didn't start with PlayStation. The grandfather rate trick has been running for decades. Companies are just sharpening it up for the modern era. So back when the original iPhone launched, AT&T offered a truly unlimited data plan for $30 bucks a month.
This was back when data was expensive, so it was a hell of a deal. Then smartphones got really good at burning through data when, you know, apps were invented, and AT&T realized that those legacy customers were absolutely cooking their network. Now, they couldn't just kick people off of contracts. So instead, they made staying on the old plan progressively more miserable, basically not allowing you to make changes to your plan without removing that unlimited data, not allowing new features like tethering, and throttling that they actually ended up getting sued by the FTC over it. And then there's the king of all of this: Adobe.
Now this is probably worth a whole video on its own, but Adobe basically rewrote the modern playbook. They aggressively push everyone into year-long subscriptions with brutal cancellation fees or even higher monthly rates. They magically discover a discount the moment you try to leave. They crank the prices up on a captive audience that no longer has any buy-it-once option. Now look, Adobe have made some great products over the years, but at this point, it's hard not to see them as just plain greedy.
Now take a second and look through PS Plus through this lens. The grandfather clause isn't a feature. It's a lock-in mechanism. You're not getting protected. You're getting trapped. And once they've got everyone trained to stay subscribed continuously, that's when the bigger hikes come 'cause then the cost of leaving is even higher. Now, sure, I understand you might be watching this video and be like, Austin, they raised the price by a dollar. Feels small. Who cares? And it is small. But by only targeting new subscribers and making it seem like they're giving you a deal,
the entire concept of subscriptions is changing. They looked at what happened with Game Pass and saw the huge backlash, and they found a really clever way of sidestepping it. And at the same time, they're locking you in more and more 'cause today it's, yeah, we're gonna be nice to our existing subscribers. But tomorrow it's, yeah, sure, you wanna cancel and lose that great rate, buddy? This lower tier doesn't even exist anymore if you leave. It would be a shame if we broke your PS kneecaps. (Alex laughs) (somber music) - Are you sure you want to leave this great rate, buddy?
It would be a shame if we broke your PS kneecaps. (beep) - Look, I get that some of this is just the world we're in. Components cost more. AI data centers are eating the planet. And as we've seen, companies like Sony are being squeezed too. Not every price hike is evil. But the grandfather clause, the "we're not raising your price" framing, I mean, that's not a response to cost. That's a tool to keep you locked in. The irony here is that this is in the face of the whole concept of paying for online play starting to feel kind of out of date.
Xbox is pivoting harder toward PC at the moment, and on PC, online multiplayer is just free. That's the baseline. The whole reason PlayStation Plus Essential exists as a product is because Sony decided years ago that they wanted to get some of that sweet, sweet revenue that Xbox Live was pulling in, and it worked. But the second that the rest of the industry stops charging for online, the entire foundation of this tier starts to get a lot shakier. I understand that I'm a YouTuber making a video on a $1 price hike and calling Sony out for that. And you know, if you do have PlayStation Plus right now, you're not paying any extra, right?
This is gonna apply to new subscribers, but I just wanna highlight that. I think everyone can recognize that subscriptions are getting out of hand, but this feels like it is like sort of almost weaponizing it to a new degree of, not only can you make it difficult to have people cancel, but you can make it outright just way more expensive for them to come back. It really incentivizes you to stick around with things that you might ordinarily not want to keep. So it's worth keeping an eye on, I think, because while it's a test right now, it's just $1, I think they're kind of putting the toe in the water.
If this works, which I expect it will, this I think will absolutely become the norm. And I think that is a very dangerous place to be. Now on that cheery note, if you enjoy this video and you wanna subscribe to the channel, make sure to subscribe for free and ring that ding-a-ling button for the Austin Evans channel. And if you want the deeper story on the entire mess Sony is into right now. You can check out that video here. Until next time, my friends, go and play something. Maybe pause the subscription first.
Oh, wait.
