Sony hasn’t quite had an answer for Xbox’s Game Pass. But according to a new report, the company is working on such a subscription service that is currently codenamed Spartacus. It is expected to launch in spring 2022.
Bloomberg is reporting that Spartacus will be a three-tiered system that will allow users to pay a monthly fee to get access to a library of classic and current titles. The article plausibly speculated that it could be available on both PlayStation 4 as well as PlayStation 5.
Sony already has two different subscription services: PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now. Plus lets users play online multiplayer and offers a handful of “free” games each month while Now lets players stream or download a whole host of games from the PS2, PS3, and PS4 era (PS3 games can only be streamed, however). Spartacus will merge these two services in a way, but the report claims that Sony will be ditching the PlayStation Now branding and keeping PlayStation Plus, which makes sense given Plus’ popularity when compared to Now.
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The details still aren’t final, but there will reportedly be three tiers of this service and explains how Sony will be combining Spartacus with PlayStation Plus but keeping it around in spirit. The first tier would essentially just be PlayStation Plus in its current form. The second tier would include a “large catalog” of PS4 games as well as PS5 games sometime in the future. The final and presumably more expensive tier would also have extended game demos, the ability to stream games, and give users access to PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP titles.
Bloomberg also claims that Sony will be looking more into cloud gaming, which Xbox has been doing with xCloud. PlayStation Now was already Sony’s answer to cloud gaming, but it appears as though that was only the tip of the iceberg.
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Sony has not commented on the existence of this service. However, the company has hinted that something like this was in the works. In November 2020, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan told TASS that there was “actually news to come” on that front, but that news would not come that day.
