Sony Computer Entertainment Europe informed South African PlayStation Plus customers in an e-mail blast on the evening of Tuesday, 30 September 2014 that prices for PS Plus subscriptions are “due to increase slightly”.

The price of a 3 month subscription went up from R145 to R219, while the 12 month subscription went from R489 to R749.

I don’t want to know what Sony might call a significant price increase if this is “slightly”.

To illustrate the point, the table below compares the previous prices to the new ones we know of.

If there’s anything slight about Sony’s announcement, it’s the notice given to customers.

The hikes kick in tomorrow: Wednesday, 1 October 2014.

If you’re reading this on the evening of 30 September 2014, you still have a chance to extend your subscription under the old prices.

Otherwise, you’ll have to try your luck with retailers like BT Games, Kalahari, and Takealot which sell PlayStation Plus voucher codes.

Mitigating the misuse of a perfectly good adverb, Sony did provide a number of handy links in its e-mail, including one to check your renewal date, and one to cancel automatic renewal of your PS Plus subscription. The link to cancel auto-renewals points to some kind of newsletter click tracking service, so it is not included here.

Sony said the increase was due to “various market conditions” (I read: shocking state of the Rand), and would only affect new members or those who renew their subscription after 1 October.

So, much like when our fuel prices are hiked (also usually on the first Wednesday of the month, co-incidentally), the time to top up is now if you want to avoid paying higher prices.

Update: We posed questions about the price hikes to Sony’s South African distributor, Ster-Kinekor Entertainment, and they provided the following statement:

Unfortunately the pricing of content from all software publishers on the PSN Store are not controlled or maintained by us as a local distributor, however, we are engaging with the respective teams in Europe to, where possible, understand and communicate the dynamics in play.

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