It appears as though Sony Interactive Entertainment is in the process of discontinuing PlayStation Plus retail cards.
If accurate, the move—which was first spotted by Polish site XGP—would coincide with the ongoing rollout of Sony’s revamped PlayStation Plus service.
While stores have traditionally sold PlayStation Plus cards offering one, three and 12-month memberships, it looks like they are no longer being restocked by third-party retailers, many of which are now only offering PlayStation Store gift cards which players can use to credit their accounts.
Introducing the all-new PlayStation Plus
While PlayStation Plus cards are still listed at some retailers, including Best Buy and Target in the US, they’re no longer available at others like Walmart, and VGC couldn’t find any being sold directly by Amazon (although some third-party sellers on Amazon were still offering them).
In the UK, PlayStation Plus cards are still being sold at Currys, but they no longer appear to be available at Amazon, Game, Smyths or Argos, which are only currently offering PlayStation Store gift cards.
While PlayStation Plus gift cards are still listed on PlayStation UK’s website, selecting the option to ‘buy now’ redirects users to a different page for PlayStation Store gift cards.
The move to pull PlayStation Plus retail cards would appear logical given the increased number of price points now available when signing up to the service, which recently launched in the US and Asia, and is set to arrive in Europe, Australia and New Zealand on June 23.
While players can still subscribe to the service for one, three or 12 months, PlayStation Plus now offers three differently priced membership tiers (Essential, Extra and Premium), meaning it has a total of nine price points, ranging from $9.99 / £6.99 to $119.99 / £99.99.
Rather than introducing multiple new PlayStation Plus cards which could confuse customers, it would seem much cleaner to simply offer PlayStation Plus gift cards going forward.
VGC has contacted Sony for comment on this story and we’ll update it if we hear back.
