Sony PlayStation tipped to offer subscription games

Credible rumours are pointing towards PlayStation making its own entry to the games subscription service arena.

Sony PlayStation 5 games console

Credible rumours in the games industry are pointing towards console giant PlayStation making its own entry to the games subscription service arena, following the lead of rivals Xbox and Apple.

While PlayStation has yet to comment on the rumours officially, a report in Bloomberg earlier this week cited “people familiar with Sony’s plans and documents reviewed by Bloomberg” as the basis for the story.

The rumoured service, said to be codenamed “Spartacus”, will reportedly merge the existing PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now paid online services into a single product with a catalogue of classic and newer games.

PlayStation Plus is currently required for multiplayer gaming on PlayStation consoles, and also offers free titles each month. The PlayStation Now service is not available in Australia, but launched in the US in 2014. It lets users stream and download a range of PlayStation games, typically older titles.

Although the plan to create such a service has neither been confirmed nor denied by PlayStation, it seems a logical step for the games company to take given the popularity of the Xbox Game Pass offering from Microsoft.

Game Pass has more than 18.5 million subscribers worldwide and is also available in Australia. It allows users to access hundreds of Xbox and PC games, including every first-party Microsoft game on the market – which includes AAA blockbusters from publisher Bethesda, which was purchased by Microsoft earlier this year for a record $US7.5bn

Since its launch in 2017, Game Pass has become widely regarded as an essential component of Xbox gaming and one of the significant attractions of the platform, which had previously struggled with a perception it lacked “exclusives” – drawcard games or experiences not available on other systems.

In recent years Ubisoft and EA have also launched their own subscription gaming services, focusing on their own games – although EA Play is also available as part of Xbox Game Pass too.

Mobile games are also a massive proportion of the gaming market, and Apple users have access to their own subscription service in the form of Apple Arcade, which launched in 2019. It works on a similar principle to Game Pass, albeit for Apple iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad only, and provides access to more than 200 mobile games, a number of which are from Australian developers.

While there have been questions raised over the profitability of game subscription services, they are popular with consumers in no small part thanks to the ubiquity of TV streaming services such as Netflix, Stan or Disney+, and fit into the same “content on demand” appeal which has made streaming TV so successful.

PlayStation has almost certainly made note of the popularity of Xbox Game Pass and Apple Arcade, so regardless of what he company’s plans actually are it would be surprising if a game subscription offering wasn’t at least under serious consideration.