Seriously, it's $4 dollars a month. Get over it

People need to stop complaining about everything. You know, just while we're at it.

I didn't know people didn't have Playstation Plus. Also, it should have been known that we would have to pay for it. Paying money to have better online on a Playstation is fine, no one is complaining except on shitty websites.

@marcsman: Its easy to say that in a vacuum, but once you start adding other random things at people such as "GB is only $5 a month, just do it." and you can imagine the other "only a few dollars a month" costs start to add up. If someone is paying for PS+, Gold, and GB alone its suddenly $14 a month and you can see how one extra thing seems expensive to people. Magazine subscriptions, Netflix, etc... Each little piece on its own is cheap but once you see the forest the trees start to matter. I'm not anti-PS+ or anything, by the way.

Oh. Well 50 bucks for a whole year isn't that much at all :) If they keep those prices, I'm in!

PS+ is god damn amazing. If they use the proceeds of more subscriptions to improve PSN then it'll be a wonderful thing for the network as a whole.

Waaaaaaaay ahead of you.

As of right now, no complaints from me.

But if they don't add something similar to the Party function of XBLive, THEN I will be complaining. As far as I know, right now the only out-of-game party chat on the PS3 is some weird little app that everyone has to be running that is like a chat room and can't be used while doing anything else.

I'm sensing a double standard 'round here.

If it's the price of a game per year and ultimately goes towards making it a better service then I can live with it. Despite the gripes I've had with advertising and securing deals I couldn't care less about on Xbox Live, at the end of the day it's much easier to set up a game with your friends on that service than it is on PSN.

If Sony can fix that and maintain things like Instant Game Collection without putting in loads of dumb adverts or "promoted content", then it's still a solid deal.

It doesn't bother me because as a future PS4 owner who also has a Vita, PS+ is a no brainer regardless.

I've seen some complaints about PS+ being needed now to play multiplayer games. Talk about the "hidden cost" as if Microsoft wasn't already doing this already and giving you less benefits at that. I actually think it's a good move for the PS4. The more people on PS+ the better experience Sony can create for users. Everything in the world can't be free, you gotta pay to play.

I dont even give a fuck. I am probably only going to play maybe a few hours every few mouths on line....I play for PS+ not for online gaming.

@shadowconqueror Because it's sick, bro!

I had gold for a long time. Then when I switched to ps3 and took the 3 month option to see what it was like and to be quite frank about it, ive been given more incentive to have ps+ over gold because they give you more than lives nothing, even though live have onky just started it

I've heard literally zero people complain about it.

EDIT: Okay, so reading through this, I see a couple people complaining. Which, still isn't much outrage considering. I mean, I think most people are okay with the trade-off. Anybody who uses PSN regularly, either playing online or downloading games or media, know that the service needs - yes, needs - to be better if it wants to be competitive to Xbox Live. While it would be great if this were a world where the service provided to (potentially) millions could sustain quick download and uploads rates, dedicated servers, and the other little features all for free, unfortunately that's not viable for a company. And I'm more in a position to trust Sony with this stuff than I would be with almost any other company. The PlayStation Plus service has already proven itself in worth, to me. If they're going to cut download times, make online gaming more stable, and potentially provide other bonuses (streaming games?), I'm all for it. As a person who barely ever plays games online, I assure you, I have not once felt let down about being a Plus member.

I love it when people talk like they are getting free games. Oh you mean those games that are apart of the $17.99 a month subscription? Those games? Right ... totally free.

Having to pay for multiplayer is having to pay for multiplayer regardless of what else is behind that paywall.

I'm not gonna complain about it but I say if it was okay for people to complain about paying for Live every day for the last seven years I don't understand why it suddenly has to stop now that Sony has implemented it too.

PS+ is gonna be cheaper on pS4 right?

@gnatsol: It will most likely be the same price it is now for a year subscription, $50. If you purchase it now for the PS3 it will automatically roll over into your PS4 account. Be on the lookout for deals though, Best Buy had a sale going on for a year of PS+ for $39.99.

For me I had a PS3 and Xbox360 and once my Live lapsed I just played the PS3 and bought games for the PS3 more than the 360. Since the new consoles both charge now it does not bother me to pay for both. So in the past I only cared since I had 2 choices one to pay and the other not too so it was an easy choice. The rule of going towards the least resistance applies in my book and if everything is equal then usage will also be balanced.

I don't know what you're talking about, people were literally cheering when Jack Tretton announced that on stage.

a business cannot offer a free service in perpetuity and expect it to improve and expand to support a growing user base.

http://fourversusone.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/ps-now-required-for-online-multiplayer/

I'm happy to pay for such a great service.

I've not heard one person complain about this. I've had issues with paying for Xbox Live but mostly because I feel I get no value from the service other than playing games. At least with PS+ we are getting other stuff with it and its cheaper.

@shadowconqueror: A lot of fan boys do. but anyways, this is just an opinion from someone who is already use to paying online, so people may disagree with me. I'm just informing those who are switching to ps4 or didn't get to use plus. You'd be surprise how many complaints this topic has had. From YouTube too other gaming community's. I'm just voicing my opinion why people shouldn't complain about this because we all should have seen this coming. Each company takes notes from each other. Unfortunately we live in a society where nothing is free and anything that is free has a trick. So i can understand why people complain about this but from a person who has had xbox live for years. This is nothing new.

I haven't seen a single person complain about having to pay to play games online, but I've seen several posts about people saying to stop complaining about the need for PS+ for online play.

I'm more of a single player, so for me the few exceptions wouldn't be worth paying for. I don't care about the PS Plus freebies, as they're only playable while subscribed and generally won't even interest me. Yet I don't want to be disconnected. After paying for internet, the console and the game, I expect to have access to all its content. This in addition to the other restrictions of PSN (which still doesn't allow username and region changes and stores save files for less than a year) and lack of backwards compatibility are making it easier to stick with PC gaming in the next generation.

Because it's such an excellent service. Because Sony has time and time again shown the stability and integrity behind the PSN. Just recently they cared so much about their fans that they conducted special research which showed that a lot of people were playing too much The Last of Us - and in an admirable showing of self sacrifice bricked their consoles with a system update so that they'd get off the couch and get some fresh air.

If I was waiting in a complaints line as long as the amount of people complaining about this topic I would've been served 5 minutes ago.

The whole reason that Xbox Live was a more reliable service was because people were actively paying for it. The fact that people will now have to pay for PS Plus can only be seen as a good thing for the overall PSN experience.

For instance, I don't have problem paying Respawn extra money for TitanFall or additional features for TitanFall. I do have an issue with paying Sony or Microsoft to play TitanFall because they have little to nothing to do with what is going on Respawn's game. It is that simple.

@extomar:

People can complain about whatever they want.

There's a sentiment in some folks, that Xbox Live is better than PSN in terms of online play. Admittedly - Live is a smoother experience and offers slightly higher bandwidth patches and such, and it has party chat. If you care about those things so much, that it's worth whatever the Gold subscription costs these days, I guess that's fine.

I for one bought the PS3 as a secondary machine at first, but after a while I just didn't see a reason to pay for Xbox Live anymore. What I care about is playing my games online, and that part is just as good as Xbox Live. So now the PS3 is my gaming mainstay, console-wise. Microsoft lost roughly 20-30 game sales from me to Sony due to Xbox Live Gold, but I guess I was in the minority in doing so. Shame, now Sony's putting up a paywall too.

I'm assuming PS4's online servies will be a step above and beyond of what we have in PSN right now. PS+ is an amazing value, especially in comparison to Xbox Live Gold (at least before Microsoft started to throw in 5 years old games). For owners of both a Vita and PS3, respecitvely PS4, PS+ will be worth it even for those who don't play online multiplayer - at least if Sony keeps delivering the way it does.

Even as a 'à la carte' type of player, I enjoy the service.

I have nearly 60000 gamerscore, but I think people should complain about everything

I have 60,001 gamer score, and you is wrong.

Wait wait wait wait...my internets ain't free?!

If you really believe that, then I own the bridge outside my office and I would like to sell it too you for cheap.

If you need a hint: PSN+ is already pretty amazing. Exactly what would making it "mandatory" do? What which features will improve? It certainly won't help Respawn or TitanFall. So why am I paying either Sony or Microsoft?

Lets call the spade a spade where these fees were really just a way to subsidize the hardware to release at lower prices.

I honestly haven't really heard any complaining.

As someone who only owns a PS3, and will make the jump to the PS4 at some point, I have no problem paying the $5 a month when the benefits of PSN plus are incorporated into it. I've been thinking about signing up for PSN plus lately anyway, so no worries for me.

Who's complaining? I think PS+ is value enough, everything else is sugar coating.

Welcome! I agree. And everyone has the right to complain about what they don't agree upon. I'm not fond of paying for online either, but i don't see myself playing in the PS4 without it.

Playstation's multiplayer and interface were one of the big things people complained about this gen. I would assume that since XBL offers such a good service (parties, consistently great multiplayer performance), people are expecting to see PSN improve as a result.

I would very much like to pay for access to PSN and multiplayer, IF this pay ensured that the infrastructure needed to do so would be superb. I have always had the feeling that Live was better than PSN, it seemed smoother and the overall feel was just of good engineering. Maybe it is the games, who knows, but I did prefer using the Xbox as a multiplayer console and then going through the major single-player experiences on the PS3.

Times have changed, like it or not. back in 1994 when one bought a PS1, it would have seemed ludicrous to expect anyone to continue paying for a service, after the console was bought, primarily because, at the time, every console was isolated from each other. I guess, that with the introduction of connected consoles, there just have to be a certain foundation be made for it to work properly, and that foundation is very much the physical infrastructure that needs to be in existence for proper connectivity between players. That does require capital to set up and keep functional. As I have not used Live that much, I cannot vouch for how accurate my estimate of the quality of Live is, however I assume this to be just about right. Some of it is also just attributed to the aesthetics of Live, PSN always seemed half-finished and half-amateur like to me.