Earlier this week during an interview with TASS, Sony CEO, Jim Ryan spoke about possible plans for PlayStations’ response to Microsoft’s subscription service, “Xbox Game Pass.” For the past few years, Mircosoft’s service has offed a collection of games for users for a monthly price, some even calling it the “Netflix of games” because of how extensive and impressive its catalog has to offer. Sony’s closest option for their users is their “PlayStation Now” service, which offers games the same way as Mircosoft’s service however it’s a much smaller catalog and half have to be streamed directed from the cloud rather than being a download to the player’s console.
“There is actually news to come,” said Jim Ryan during his interview with TASS about developing a new console generation during a pandemic. “We have PlayStation Now which is our subscription, and that is available in a number of markets.”
While their service is more focused on streaming games to the console compared to “Xbox Game Pass’” downloading directly to the console, this does give hope to PlayStation users. Streaming requires a more than decent internet connection which can be difficult for the majority of their audiences, which is why the direct download for games is a much better option. Player’s are able to download some games, however, the number of games that are available for download aren’t as grand or great as the selection “Xbox Game Pass” provides.
Currently, “Xbox Game Pass” is available for $9.99/monthly which grants access to the 100+ games library, with new games being added and removed constantly and exclusive discounts. They also offer and Game Pass Ultimate subscription for $14.99 a month which includes everything previously mentioned, cloud gaming from Android phones, tablets and PCs, “Xbox Live Gold” which includes exclusive deals, monthly free games and access to multiplayer. The Ultimate subscription also includes “EA Play” another subscription service on top of it which includes a collection of 80+ games from developer EA.
It’s an incredible and extremely popular deal that has pushed Xbox further for consumers that “PlayStation Now” hardly shows up on most players radar making it feel hardly worth the $9.99 subscription when Xbox has so much more to offer. Even after PlayStation dropped the price of their service in half in 2019, users are still fairly low compared to Game Pass, with PS Now at an estimated 2.2 million users and Game Pass having an estimated 15 million users. Players are now curious about how PlayStation intends to respond to the massive success of Xbox Game Pass and what the news Ryan mentions could be, how it might emulate or iterate on how these services might work in the now new console generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment