Details regarding the local pricing and content behind Sony’s recently announced PlayStation Plus premium online gaming service have been officially announced on the company’s European blog.

According to My Gaming a single year subscription to the service will cost R489, while a 3 month subscription will set local PlayStation 3 owners back R145.

In return PlayStation Plus will provide subscribers with a number of add ons including a freely downloadable game, two free PS Minis and one free PlayStation 1 classic. These titles will however only be valid for as long as the player is an active PlayStation Plus subscriber.

In addition subscribers will also have access to discounts of up to 20-40% on selected titles as well as two full game trials and two dynamic themes.

Members will also be able to set their PS3 to wake up from standby at any time of the day or night, download and install any game updates for the games they have been playing. System software updates will also download automatically and then the PS3 will turn itself off again.

 Despite all of the benefits Sony has confirmed that cross game chat, which is available on Microsoft’s Xbox LIVe service, is not yet available on PlayStation Plus.