PlayStation Has No Plans To Offer Xbox Game Pass-Type Subscription Service

The PlayStation 5 Showcase provided information on price and release date for the next-gen console but also provided a big surprise in the form of the PlayStation Plus Collection.

People who subscribe to Sony's PS Plus subscription service (a requirement for playing online) will receive a large slate of PS4 games, including some of its biggest first-party releases alongside a selection of third-party titles.

It is not, however, a replacement for Sony’s PlayStation Now streaming service. Instead, the PlayStation Plus Collection is a separate offering that looks to counter the appeal of Xbox Game Pass. In the latter’s case, Xbox put all of its games onto the subscription service on the day they are released.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and President Jim Ryan does not agree with that model though. "For us, having a catalog of games is not something that defines a platform," Ryan says in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.

"Our pitch, as you've heard, is 'new games, great games.' We have had this conversation before -- we are not going to go down the road of putting new releases titles into a subscription model. These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don't see that as sustainable,” he adds.

"We want to make the games bigger and better, and hopefully at some stage more persistent. So putting those into a subscription model on day one, for us, just doesn't make any sense,” Ryan says. “For others in a different situation, it might well make sense, but for us, it doesn't. We want to expand and grow our existing ecosystem, and putting new games into a subscription model just doesn't sit with that."

With the move to digital accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, specialist retail stores have suffered considerably with their sales of physical games. Some though were disappointed with the digital-only PlayStation 5 being priced at $100 cheaper at $399 since its counterpart, the Xbox Series S, is going to sell at $299.

"The great first-party IPs are all there, the great partner titles, and we'd say that if you are new to PlayStation, or if you didn't have a PS4 but are getting a PS5, and you're taking out a PS Plus subscription, you're basically getting PS4 there for the price of the subscription," Ryan says about the PlayStation Plus Collection.

"We're delighted to be able to do that. We think that's really exciting and we hope that people were surprised and delighted by that," he said at the showcase event.

For initial release on Nov. 12 in North America and select countries, the PlayStation 5 will be released globally on Nov. 19.