Recently a PlayStation blog entry was updated to announce a price increase to the PlayStation Plus subscription service.

Naturally, this news is probably of some concern to PS4 owners, given both how many rands there are to the dollar and the fact that our currency can tend to fluctuate in value from time to time. With that in mind, htxt.africa decided to contact Sony’s local distributor to see how local gamers will be affected.

We have some good news; Ster-Kinekor, PlayStation’s official distributor on our shores, says that the PS+ subscription price will remain the same in South Africa.

This means that PS4 owners will still be paying R749 for a year’s subscription, R219 for three months, and R99 for a single month.

For the United States, Canada, and we assume some other countries, the price has increased to $59.99 USD/$69.99 CAD for a year, $24.99 USD/$29.99 for three months and $11.99 CAD for one month in Canada. In the US, the one month sub will remain at $9.99 USD.

These new prices come into effect from September 22nd, 2016.

It is noted that this is the first time the service will experience a price hike since being introduced in 2010. The increase is being attributed to “current market conditions”.

There has been no announcement on the PlayStation blog Europe announcing a change in the Plus prices in that region (which sometimes affect South Africa) but we’ll keep an eye on it regardless.

The last time this country saw a rise in the price of the service was in October of 2014. The cost has remained the same since then.

While this is great news for local gamers and subscribers, the way this announcement was handled is less than upfront. Instead of creating a new blog post or announcement on the site, the news was simply published as an update to an old blog post posted back on July 27th 2016.

We’re not sure exactly when the update was added, but it was only reported on by international sites less than a day ago from the time of writing.