Has your PS Plus membership run out? Or have you just been waiting for the right time to subscribe to Sony's online subscription service? Either way, Black Friday presents the perfect opportunity to pick up or renew a PlayStation Plus subscription.
There will be plenty of great Black Friday PS5 deals and Black Friday PS4 deals floating around this year, but PS Plus should be every PlayStation owner's priority during the hectic sales period. Sure, PS Plus deals tend to pop up throughout the year, but Black Friday is the only time of the year we reliably see PlayStation Plus memberships drop to their lowest prices.
The best part of renewing or picking up a 12-month PS Plus subscription during this period is that when you need to renew again next year it'll be Black Friday again, so you'll get a discount again. It's a genius strategy. It’s also why I always recommend a one-year subscription, rather than three or one-month subs. Even if you're at the critical point where your subscription is due to run out before Black Friday, I advise picking up a cheaper one-month subscription to tide you over until then (check out our cheapest PS Plus deals page for more) before grabbing a bigger discount later on.
Picking up a great Black Friday PS Plus deal in 2022 won’t be as straightforward as it has been in previous years
But, picking up a great Black Friday PS Plus deal in 2022 won’t be as straightforward as it has been in previous years. Back in June, Sony revamped the subscription service. The overhauled PS Plus is now tiered, with higher tiers combining Sony’s PS Now streaming service (which is now unavailable as a standalone). As such, getting a good PS Plus deal isn’t as simple as buying a discounted 12-month subscription, instead, you now need to buy gift cards.
That doesn’t mean sizeable discounts won’t be available, however. These gift cards will likely be discounted during the Black Friday period, allowing you to purchase PS Plus memberships for less. You can still ‘stack’ memberships to an extent, too – though the process is a bit different than in previous years.
Want to know more? Here’s what you need to know to bag yourself a Black Friday PS Plus bargain this year.
How do I get a great Black Friday PS Plus deal?
As mentioned above, Sony has now scrapped producing and selling PS Plus subscription cards. While some will likely be floating about at third-party retailers this year, I advise avoiding them as they can’t be stacked, are outdated, and likely won’t offer the best value for money.
Instead of PS Plus cards, retailers are selling PlayStation gift cards. These have always been available, but now, when you look up ‘PS Plus’ on Amazon UK, for example, these gift cards come up instead of subscription cards. There’s a good reason for that.
Retailers like Amazon are instead offering the cost of each of PS Plus’ subscription tiers in a gift card
With no subscription cards to sell, retailers like Amazon are instead offering the cost of each of PS Plus’ subscription tiers in a gift card. In the UK, you can buy a £50 gift card that will cover a year of PS Plus Essential, an £84 gift card to cover a year of Extra, or a £100 card to cover a year of Premium.
In the US, however, buying gift cards to cover your subscription seems to be a bit less straightforward. A year of PS Plus Essential costs $59.99, Extra costs $99.99, and Premium costs $119.99, but there aren’t cards that specifically cover these amounts. However, you can pair two cards to make the right amount. For example, buying two $30 gift cards to cover a $60 Essential subscription.
During Black Friday sales, we will likely see these gift cards discounted, which means you pay less for the gift card and, therefore, less for your PS Plus membership.
To actually redeem these subscriptions, you need to redeem the gift card (which adds the funds to your PlayStation wallet) and then pay for the subscription out of your wallet. It’s certainly not as straightforward as the subscription cards, but the end is the same – you save on your membership.
Can you still stack PS Plus memberships?
Don’t buy up a load of subscription cards and hope to stack them for the next few years. Sony has blocked that
Whether you can still stack PS Plus memberships is somewhat confusing, but here’s what you need to know.
For starters, you cannot stack the original PS Plus subscription cards. Sony has blocked that, so don’t buy up a load and hope to stack them for the next few years. When it comes to the new tiered subscriptions, however, you can extend your active PS Plus membership (almost like stacking). So you can buy up enough gift cards to cover both this year and an extra year of membership, at a discount, meaning you don’t have to worry about renewing your PS Plus membership until 2024. To use these, you redeem the cards as explained above, buy your current year of membership then select ‘buy another subscription’ in your PlayStation account and use the extra wallet funds to add another year’s subscription on. This should add extra time to your current subscription, saving you money in the long run.
It is worth noting, however, it is currently unclear if there’s a limit to how much extended time you can add to your subscription. TRG has contacted Sony for clarification but, at present, we advise not buying more than two years’ worth. I will update this article as soon as I know more.
