• Sony has announced that discounts will be coming to its PlayStation Plus services as part of a Black Friday promotion from 18th to 28th November 2022.
• According to leaked details, all three tiers of the service will have discounts of up to 25 percent for 12-month subscriptions.
• PlayStation Plus is Sony’s gaming subscription service which offers “free” games for a monthly fee, similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass.

*Updated to reflect current PS Plus subscription prices in South Africa and what the discounted prices could be.

Black Friday deals are coming to Sony’s PlayStation Plus service this month, starting 18th November.

Official communications from PlayStation show that PlayStation Plus (PS Plus) will be discounted by 25 percent, and newly leaked information from Dealabs user billbill-kun (in French) indicates that prices are being slashed across all three subscription tiers.

PlayStation Plus Black Friday deal starts November 18 pic.twitter.com/WUEB5RQLRK

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) November 15, 2022

According to the leaker, which has been proven accurate in predicting PS Plus lineups every month since September 2021, the PS Plus Black Friday promotion will run from 18th to 28th November 2022.

While South Africa isn’t highlighted in any communications, we expect the Black Friday discounts to arrive across all of Sony’s markets.

As part of the promotion, 12-month PS Plus subscriptions across the tiers will become available for the following:

• PlayStation Plus Essential – ~R561.75 (normally R749.00)
• PlayStation Plus Extra – ~R929.25 (normally R1 239.00)
• PlayStation Plus Premium – ~R1 071.75 (normally R1 429.00)

If the leaks prove accurate, this will mark the first subscription discount offered by the service since it was revamped in March 2022. Sony underwent wide-ranging changes to PS Plus in order to make it more competitive against Microsoft’s rival service Xbox Game Pass.

Since the updates, however, PS Plus has experienced a drop off of around 2 million subscribers that Sony blames on the fact that more players are moving away from PlayStation 4 consoles. It said that subscriptions on PlayStation 5 consoles have held strong.

Game Pass, on the other hand, has continued to be a success for Microsoft. The service currently generates around 15 percent of Xbox’ total revenue.

While Xbox boss Phil Spencer says he doesn’t expect the console side of Game Pass to grow much bigger he does expect the PC side of the service to add more subscriptions in the coming years.

Like Game Pass, PS Plus offers “free” games to subscribers across both companies’ catalogues. This month’s PS Plus games are headlined by Nioh 2 Remastered and the Harry Potter LEGO collection.

However, Game Pass remains a much better value for money than PS Plus, even at its most expensive tier in terms of offered content and pricing.

For example, PS Plus Extra, the middle tier of Sony’s service goes for R153 more than the most expensive Xbox Game Pass tier despite Xbox offering more products.

[Image – PlayStation]