In an article for Bloomberg, Jason Schreier reports that Playstation could be revealing it’s new video game subscription service as early as next week according to sources. The service which has been developed under the codename “Spartacus” is Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s Game Pass, whose subscription service has already amassed a totally of over 25 million subscribers.
According to Schreier’s sources, Sony’s subscription service will hit Playstation with a “splashy lineup of games from recent years,” and will combine two of Sony’s current offerings – Playstation Now and Playstation Plus. The service also reportedly has several tiers, with each tier providing more value as the price increases. The base tier will provide the same value as a current Playstation Plus does right now, allowing online play and free monthly games. The second tier will reportedly add in a bunch of PS4 games, with PS5 games coming “eventually.” The third and most expensive tier will add classic Playstation games from PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP, and give players access to extended game demos and the ability to stream games. This could be very appealing to Playstation owners as there is currently no backwards compatibility with games before the PS4 era.
However, even without knowing the pricing information we can see that Sony’s offering still falls behind Microsoft’s Game Pass in a couple of key areas. For one, the lowest tier doesn’t give access to any kind of game catalog at all, whereas the lowest tier of Game Pass still gives players access to hundreds of games. One of the best things that Game Pass has going for it though is the Microsoft’s decision to allow their biggest releases to come to Game Pass on day one. With Microsoft’s recent huge acquisitions, highly anticipated games like Bethesda’s Starfield will be available to Game Pass on release for no extra cost, which is obviously a huge bargain. However, it doesn’t look like Sony is following suit.
The new service from Sony is not expected to feature any big new releases on the day they release. That means the upcoming God of War: Ragnarok is unlikely to offered on the service right away according to Schreier’s sources.
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