Sony has rolled out its new PS Plus gift cards at retailers but has somehow managed to botch the job.
In the runup to its revamped PS Plus service, Sony seemed to be pulling its PS Now and old PS Plus gift cards from stores. With the rush to snap up cards and stack them for discounted subscriptions, the move to whip them off retailers’ shelves made sense.
Now that the overhauled PS Plus has rolled out, the gift cards are popping up on online storefronts. But Sony has either done a really shoddy job of it or hasn’t given retailers the proper info because the listings are causing some serious confusion. God help any hapless parents striking out into unfamiliar gaming territory to buy one.
Spotted by Push Square, the new cards seem to be a combination of straight-up PS Store credit, gift cards explicitly for PS Plus membership, and PS Store gift cards that are clearly supposed to be for additional membership tiers that have no mention of PS Plus anywhere on them.
If you head over to Amazon UK, you can see the listings and how confusing they are. You’ve got your PS Store gift cards in the usual denominations – so £10, £15, £30, etc. The usual fare. Then there’s a very helpfully labeled trio of cards for one, three, and 12 months of PS Plus Essential membership. So far, so reasonable.
Scrolling down, though, a randomly priced £84 PS Store gift card rears its head. Bit strange. But that’s the UK price for a 12-month mid-tier PS Plus Extra subscription ($99.99 / £83.99 / AU$133.70). There’s also a £32 gift card on the list as well which covers the £31.99 ($39.99 / AU$53.50) quarterly cost of the same tier’s membership.
ShopTo seems to have the same issue with its listings, and Sony’s official website is no help. It simply tells you that gift cards are available to purchase, but the rest is up to you to figure out. Want retailer links? Forget it. This is shopping on hard mode. Git gud or get out.
So the new scheme appears to be selling you gift cards priced to let you cash them in for specific tiers of PS Plus Extra membership, though the text on the cards doesn’t make clear that that’s the reason for their pricing. If you’re just shopping for a card or a subscription top up this is a bizarre system to navigate.
Hopefully, the listings will be updated, until then, take a look at our PS Plus guide, linked at the top of the page. We’ve got the pricing options for PS Plus Essential, Extra, and Premium with info on each. You should be able to match up the gift cards to the membership you’re after. Good luck!