Considering their subscription competitor costs $204 a year while they were at $120/yr, I think it's pretty clear why they boosted the upper tiers so much. Even with this price increase, it's still $44 cheaper than Ultimate and imo a better overall value in terms of game quality.
What's really trash is that they're increasing the price of the base PS+ membership, and by so much. It now costs $150 a year to play just Madden, CoD, or EA Soccer, on top of a minimum $400 console purchase. That's absurd. I would say this is a W for Xbox, but they already tried to increase the price of Gold and they'll definitely try again now that they know there's no escaping it.
...Other than buying a PC.