Apple TV+ gets a painful 43% price hike - and Apple Arcade suffers a hefty rise too

Here's some more bad news in the world of streaming services, as Apple is hiking the price of Apple TV+ - and sadly, it's a big old increase, plus it's not the only subscription charge to increase among Apple's offerings.

As TechSpot noticed (and Mark Gurman raised on X), Apple TV+ is going to increase from a $6.99 monthly fee to $9.99, which is a 43% hike - ouch indeed. The yearly price will go up from $69 to $99, we're told.

It's particularly painful as with the pricing on other streaming services like Netflix on the way up, and Amazon planning to show ads with Prime Video (and charge to remove them) early next year, Apple has remained a wallet-friendly alternative.

With this $3 increase, it's less attractive for sure. We have a free trial running right now, and are enjoying it a lot, but we'll probably return to the service less often than we otherwise might have thanks to the price hike.

Along with this, Apple is increasing the pricing on a bunch of its other services, as mentioned.

Apple Arcade is now $6.99 per month (after the first month for free), which is again up quite a chunk from the previous $4.99 per month.

And Apple News+ subscribers will face a $12.99 monthly charge, which is up from $9.99 per month.

Apple One, the package of subscriptions, is increasing the price of an individual plan from $16.95 to $19.95 (the Premier plan has been pushed up to $37.95 per month, too).

So, as you can see, these price bumps are all in the order of $2 or $3 mostly, but that makes a big impact with some of the cheaper services like Apple TV+.

If you want to lock in a cheaper price for Apple TV+, by the way, denizens on X have flagged up that it's still possible to sign up for a year at $69 - at the time of writing. While the increases are supposedly happening today, evidently it'll be later on (but by the time you read this, it might be too late already).

As you may recall, recently Netflix also announced it's upping subscription prices considerably, charging $11.99 per month for its Basic plan, which has gone up $2. The Premium subscription plan witnessed an even bigger rise to $22.99 per month compared to $19.99 previously, a bit of an eye-watering increase it has to be said. The $6.99 monthly 'standard with ads' plan remains at the same price level, so at least that's something, but it does, of course, have adverts which will hardly be ideal for many folks.