Of course nobody likes price increases, but in the interest of being fair-minded I took a closer look at the value proposition for Essential, since that's what I have. On average, I play 2 or 3 of the free games released on Essential (or what was simply PS Plus before that) each year, which I would have spent roughly $40 on had I purchased them on PSN or Amazon. I've never used the Share Play feature, so at the new price point, I'm basically spending $40/year (or $3.33/month) for online play and cloud saves.
I know my experience is not everyone's experience, but for me it doesn't seem like such a bad deal. I know some would argue that online play should be a free service, but if it's not free for Sony to provide the service, is it reasonable to expect it to be offered for free?