Next week could be a big week for Sony. Late last year, Bloomberg revealed that Sony was working on their own Game Pass for PlayStation codenamed “Spartacus“. Now, sources close to Spartacus are once again telling Jason Schreier and Takashi Mochizuki of Bloomberg that Sony is preparing to formally announce the service next week.
Sony Group Corp. is preparing to introduce a new video game subscription service for the PlayStation as early as next week, said people familiar with the plans.
Much like how Xbox Game Pass has a tiered system, “Spartacus” is also set to feature different tiers for players to choose from. As of now, these are the previously reported tiers:
- Tier 1 would maintain existing PlayStation Plus benefits, which provides free games to players to own and is also required to play multiplayer and access online content.
- Tier 2 would provide subscribers with a large catalog of PlayStation 4 games, with PlayStation 5 games being added in due time.
- Tier 3 would include extended demos, game streaming and a library of classic PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP games.
While “Spartacus” is set to be a direct competitor to Xbox Game Pass, as you see from the tier list above, it won’t be the exact same service. Where Microsoft will upload new games to Xbox Game Pass on Day 1 of release, Sony is not offering that with their new service. PlayStation currently makes too much money to offer new games to their service. They could change course later, but as of now it doesn’t seem that’s the plan. Rather, new games like God of War: Ragnarok will hit the service at a later date.
One game that could be on Spartacus on Day 1 could be a game from a studio they recently partnered with, Destiny 2. As it is an online regularly-updated service game, it makes perfect sense that Bungie’s new backer would land on “Spartacus” potentially with an exclusive reward for “Spartacus” players. Although, that’s purely speculation.
Stay tuned next week to see when “Spartacus” is revealed and what the actual name will be.
