PlayStation Plus Set To Change Forever Tomorrow, Millions To Be Excluded

Millions of PlayStation Plus subscribers are to be excluded come New Year, as a big change promised in January finally goes into effect.

PlayStation Plus subscribers across all tiers have had it good for many years now, as while the price of Sony’s subscription service is pretty high, the value is clear to see.

Even the lowest tier, PlayStation Plus Essential, is a solid option as while it gives you access to online play, it also awards you with a few free games every month, with January’s line-up being announced later today, so stay tuned for that.

Unfortunately, millions of subscribers are going to be left out of 2026’s freebies, as all games offered through PlayStation Plus Essential will be PlayStation 5 exclusives starting from New Year's Day.

This was announced at the start of this year, and while it won’t affect PlayStation 4 games currently offered through the subscription service, it does mean games going forward won’t be compatible with Sony’s last-gen console.

For those who haven’t upgraded to the PlayStation 5 yet, this is pretty devastating and actually makes PlayStation Plus less desirable as a result, so I’d imagine many will be cancelling their subscriptions going forward. For those considering that, just remember that you’ll lose access to all PlayStation Plus games, including PlayStation Plus Essential ones in your library.

Sony

It Was Bound to Happen Eventually

It could be argued that this is Sony’s attempt at forcing consumers to upgrade if they haven’t already, but I’m not sure this is the case.

When a new PlayStation Plus line-up is announced, there tends to be a bit of backlash every time.

Most of the time this is because the games being offered are last-gen titles that don’t take advantage of the PlayStation 5 hardware. I’ve seen many argue that for the price of a subscription, the games being offered should be of a similar value, and PlayStation said as much when it announced that PlayStation 4 titles would no longer be offered going forward.

So on the bright side, this hopefully means that future PlayStation Plus games will be of a better overall quality which is exciting. The downside, of course, is PlayStation 4 gamers are going to be left out, so it might be worth checking out those post-Christmas/Boxing Day deals to see if you can grab a PlayStation 5 on the cheap, if you haven’t already.

PlayStation will announce its January PlayStation Plus line-up later today, which will hopefully give us an indication of what the rest of the year will be like.