There has been a correction to the statements about Prime Video no longer being available as a stand-alone subscription in the US. Amazon has reached out to let us know that the subscription can still be found by visiting this page and following the prompts until you see the option for the $8.99/mo plan.
The page may or may not be easy to find depending on the path you take from the main website, but you’ll (at least) have the link here to take advantage of.
The original story is as follows:
Amazon Prime Video subscriptions have been allowing users to take advantage of the company’s movie and TV service by paying monthly for it like any other. Its pricing has been somewhat similar to that of Netflix, Disney, Hulu, etc. Users who subscribe to Amazon Prime membership normally get access to Prime Video as a perk for being a full member. However, this model is changing now.
Instead of using access to Prime Video as a perk for full Prime members, Amazon is now requiring users to be full Prime members to gain access to the service. New users will no longer be able to sign up for Prime Video by itself for the smaller rate.
Users looking to subscribe are now being forwarded to the main Amazon Prime membership page. Thus if you want streaming, you have to buy into everything else as well. Making Amazon’s streaming service a little more pricey if you don’t frequently shop Amazon for everything else. For those already subscribed, nothing changes in their world.
Those already subscribed to the video service alone seem to be unaffected for now. So it would be wise to squat it out for as long as they allow those to continue. But if the company ends up discontinuing those plans for active subscriptions, you will be forced into full membership or you’ll be looking for a new alternative. I want to say that (hopefully) this won’t happen, but given the streak of actions companies have been taking recently, it wouldn’t surprise me.
This is too bad as the price for just the video subscription was competitive and gave a reason to pull away from other services that keep upping their price. Likely, this has a lot to do with the new Fallout series that has been taking the world by storm and bringing a new layer of popularity toward the related games. In fact, Microsoft has seen a noticeable boost in Game Pass subscribers looking to gain access to multiple games they have within the Game Pass catalog. All thanks to the success of the new series. So Amazon is likely hoping to bank on it all as well.
