PlayStation Reportedly Merging PS Plus and PS Now To Rival Game Pass
It’s taken them a while, but finally Sony seems to be planning something juicy on the subscription service front if a recent report is to be believed.
And the report seems quite credible enough, coming from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who says that Sony is planning to merge both PS Plus and PS Now and will create a new service that will be similar to Game Pass, which currently allows users access to a huge library of both old and new games for a per month subscription fee.
Codenamed “Spartacus”, this new service is reportedly launching around Spring 2022 and will consequently phase out the PS Now while keeping PS Plus from a branding perspective.
What will the new PlayStation subscription service include?
The report gives further details about “Spartacus”, and while plans are not yet finalized, the service is rumored to have 3 subscription tiers that players can choose from depending on their needs and will be available to PS4 and PS5 users.
The first tier will include existing PS Plus benefits like free games and multiplayer access, and the second tier will add a long list of PlayStation 4 games, with PlayStation 5 games being added down the line. The third tier will include game streaming, extended demos, and access to PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and PSP games. As you can imagine, this highest tier will be something very interesting to watch out for especially if the games will be streamed or downloaded, along with trophy support.
At the moment, there is no news yet on pricing but we can’t imagine that it will differ too much from Game Pass if Sony wants to keep things competitive. The Bloomberg report also says that Sony is also expanding efforts on the cloud gaming front.
It would be fantastic to see Sony finally respond to the Game Pass Gauntlet that’s highly touted as the best deal in gaming at the moment. If this report holds true, then 2022 just got a whole lot spicier.