PlayStation Plus PlayStation Now PS4 1

Oh no, our bullsh*t detector is about to explode. Again. Sony announced that it will be pushing up the price of PlayStation Plus starting 31st August in Europe and Australia this week, and it went down about as well as a north-eastern team in the Premier League. Now the ever-dependable games media is attempting to make sense of the Japanese giant’s lust for lolly, and has started writing nonsense.

Apparently, on the browser-based PlayStation Store right now is an advert for PlayStation Now in the PlayStation Plus section. It’s promoting the fact that PlayStation 4 games can now be played via the streaming platform – a feature that the manufacturer may want to, y'know, ensure members of its other subscription service know about.

Well, rumour has it there’s a greater conspiracy at play: this “could” all be evidence that the platform holder is adding PlayStation Now content to PlayStation Plus – it just omitted to tell any of us when it hiked the price. Let’s ignore the fact that the cloud-based service is currently unavailable in a vast majority of the countries where the cost is being increased because, er, facts and stuff.

To add “evidence” to this already steaming rumour, Tidux – the notorious industry nobody who’s better known for the guesswork he gets wrong rather than right – has weighed in on the whole situation, suggesting he’s “heard” it’s happening. Presumably he got his information from the same source that told him about PlayStation Network name changes and Sucker Punch’s new game?

Also being cited as support for this shaky rumour is a query about PlayStation Now on the PS4 firmware update v5.00 beta sign ups page. Originally the North American page asked those registering for the beta whether they subscribed to PlayStation Now. Aside from this being a completely different region to the one where prices are increasing, you’d think the survey might have also asked about PlayStation Plus if there was a connection to be made, no?

This rumour has more holes in it than a slice of high-quality Swiss cheese. That’s not to say it’s categorically impossible, but it’s highly, highly unlikely – and none of the information presented suggests otherwise. The problem with rumours like this is that people genuinely believe them, so please don’t be fooled by the fiction posted elsewhere.