In the age of subscription services, Microsoft continues to lead in that respect for the video game industry compared to Nintendo & Sony Interactive Entertainment. This week, the Xbox firm shared that more than 25 million users are subscribed to Xbox Game Pass. But, it is expected that team PlayStation is working on a response to the titan. Even CEO & President Jim Ryan explained there is a plan to combat Xbox Game Pass more than a year ago.
From Bloomberg recently, it was reported that Sony Interactive Entertainment is working on its own service, codenamed Spartacus. It is told there will be new tiers for players to pay for more premium titles including current releases and legacy titles from PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3. More recently it was suggested news will break soon for the service with PlayStation Now cards being pulled from retailers in the U.K.
According to Phil Spencer when speaking to IGN, he explains his thought process on the pursuit by the PlayStation firm. And, he believes it’s the correct direction to follow.
As you know, so many of these things actually intertwine with themselves, from [backwards compatibility] in terms of a way of building out a library of games that we have shipping on PC and console simultaneously […] knowing that Game Pass is gonna come and we wanna bring Game Pass to multiple platforms – all of these decisions kind of stack on top of themselves.
I don’t mean it to sound like we’ve got it all figured out, but I think the right answer is allowing your customers to play the games they wanna play, where they wanna play them, and giving them choice about how they build their library, and being transparent with them about what our plans are in terms of our PC initiatives and our cross-gen initiatives and other things.
Adding, “So when I hear others doing things like Game Pass or coming to PC, it makes sense to me because I think that’s the right answer.” Spencer continues, “I don’t really look at it as validation. I actually, when I’m talking to our teams, I talk about it as an inevitability. So for us, we should continue to innovate, continue to compete, because the things that we’re doing might be advantages that we have in the market today, but they’re just based on us going first, not that we’ve created something that no one else can go create.
“I like it because it feeds our energy on what are the next things that we should be working on as we continue to build out the things that we’ve done in the past. Because I think the right answer is to ship great games, ship them on PC, ship them on console, ship them on cloud, make them available Day 1 in the subscription. And I expect that’s what our competitor will do.”
Noted, Spencer referenced games going to PC with God of War being the most recent vessel for the PlayStation company to enter that realm. The game offers a breath of fresh air for the platform and truly delivers to the expectations for those on PC. Additionally, he also expressed the ongoing interest to deliver Xbox Game Pass to “multiple platforms.”
Previously, Spencer told that both PlayStation & Nintendo Switch were not likely candidates for the service. However, at least for the sake of Nintendo, a spokesperson could not give an answer on the matter in a recent inquiry. You can read the full report by heading here.
Are you interested by Spencer’s response from the Xbox boss?
Source: IGN
