We were treated to the news of PlayStation's answer to Xbox Game Pass today in the form of a merged PS Plus and PS Now service set to launch this June, but it's missing one key thing compared to Xbox Game Pass, and that's the complete absence of first-party releases joining the new PlayStation service on the same day they launch.
And as you can imagine, Xbox hasn't remained silent about this. Earlier today, the Xbox Game Pass Twitter account caused a stir when it mentioned in capital letters that Game Pass allows you to "play brand new games on DAY ONE", followed by GM of Xbox Games Marketing Aaron Greenberg also hyping up the same aspect of Game Pass:
PlayStation boss Jim Ryan did have a few comments to share earlier today about why the PS4 and PS5 service wouldn't be adding new first-party releases at launch in the future, explaining in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz that the current PlayStation Studios business model essentially wouldn't support it, and therefore "the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want."
In our view here at Pure Xbox, Xbox Game Pass has clearly still got the upper hand when you compare the two services on paper, but the new version of PlayStation Plus should still prove a worthy option for PS4 and PS5 owners when it arrives in June, and it'll be interesting to see how things pan out for it over the next 12 months-or-so.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
Comments 35
No surprise its this guy again, pretty obvious the company with WAY more money can bully the market and also costs more so of course gamepass is better and can afford day one releases, but lets compare subscription player figures after a few years to see which one is more successful as at the moment sony has more playstation plus subscribers than gamepass so even if half of those get the second tier they would be neck and neck straight off the bat
It is better value. If MS want to use their Duck Tales vault of money to bring me a great value product so be it.
@UltimateOtaku91 How’re they ‘bullying the market? They fund and develop their own games and put them on Gamepass day one. Plenty of indie devs have spoken out in favour of it as it brings cash and visibility to their games and they throw cash at bigger devs to get some third party titles day one.
Is Sony ‘bullying the market’ when they pay for timed exclusivity or make deals for a game to appear on Plus and no other subscription service for a set amount of time?
You don’t know what you’re on about as usual.
They literally just merged PS Now. They didn't....do anything. I guess they put backwards compatibility behind a paywall, so that's.... something
@Fenbops of course they are bullying the market, they are richer than sony and nintendo combined and can outbid any takeover of any developer if they wanted, they own streaming servers and are ahead in pc software and have more know how when it comes to streaming etc they own two of the top 4 third party developers which they spent over 70 Billion on, something sony and nintendo could only dream of, if sony entered talks to buy ubisoft tomorrow do you think Microsoft would let that continue? They can afford to make losses on gamepass to out do the competition whilst knowing full well the competition can't afford to do that in return
By bullying I don't mean in an hostile way I just mean they are using their unlimited cash reserves to not give sony or nintendo a chance
I enjoy the first party games being released on gamepass. Now, if we could just get some more of them😐
Sony did a really good job advertising the value of gamepass today, but I'm not sure that was actually their aim
@UltimateOtaku91 everyone does it though it’s just more obvious because MS have more money. I don’t think they’re bullying the market but definitely buying aggressively and trying to outdo the competition using their wealth.
What else do you want them to do though? They blew it completely with the Xbox One which led to Sony dominating for a decade, they’re fighting back hard. Competition is good and Sony have become too complacent, they’ve been treating their consumers like absolute mugs. Xbox being stronger should lead to better value and make Sony up their game too.
@Royalblues yeah you ain’t wrong. Sad state of affairs on the anime side too 😔
Some say that everytime Uptownsoul and UltimateOtaku whinge or throw their toys out the pram; another awesome game is added to Gamepass.
@Royalblues 95% of anime content worldwide? They own funimation and Crunchyroll who only dub and sub anime for the west, Sony don't actually make/produce much anime and only Studio they own that do is Aniplex, so where on earth did you get that 95% figure 🤔
@uptownsoul i wouldn't worry about it too much, one thing I've noticed on here is that people talk more about playstation/sony (and not in a good way) than they do about xbox and always the same group of people
Microsoft are player number driven - they want their games to reach as many people as they can - like they do all their other software and accessible through a 'family' of devices of which the console is one option. They are focused on Subscription numbers and player engagement - 20m players in the first few weeks vs 4-5m over a lifetime and 'each' is a step into that developers store, selling you their craft in the hope you'll spend time and/or money with them in the future as you enjoy their game - or not, no obligation either way, at least you made up your own mind by trying it...
Sony's business model is still Sales driven - how can we get people to 'buy' our console, buy our software, get it to the top of the sales chart to measure 'success'. Giving their 'assets' away day and date doesn't make sense in that regard so you have to try and 'add' value elsewhere and PSNow wasn't working so kind of merge it and PS+ together so some of those 45+m PS+ members pay more because only 2m or so have PSnow.
Its more a rebrand and update/modernise it for the new generation, than a completely 'new' service like Game Pass was and still is...
@BAMozzy I honestly don't know why Sony hasn't targeted the mobile audience with this, I'm pretty sure they had it a few years ago but they took it down (could be mistaken)
There will be more than 2 million of those ps plus subscribers that atleast subscribe to the second tier, so for Sony it was a gamble of upsetting 2 million which will pay off
@uptownsoul @UltimateOtaku91 And you two are always griping and whining about something or other with Microsoft and Xbox here so it's all even. I'll give you the tags you want.
@Royalblues may I ask why were people upset sony bought Crunchyroll? Those people still get to watch on the same devices they were watching on before and with sonys money they will get even more shows to watch and with the merger with funimation they will now also get way more dubbed content to watch, again all on the same devices they were using before.
So it's completely different from Microsoft buying Bethesda which meant playstation players couldn't still enjoy new Bethesda games on the same devices as before
@Sakisa never said anything about being tagged but cheers 👍
The announcement was little more than a restructuring (can no longer subscribe only to streaming), rebranding and hollow promises to do better with future content additions without actually naming titles.
Expecting that this rebranding will get any significant portion of the PSPlus subscribers to upgrade is, honestly, wishful thinking.
In some ways they made their service more expensive without even talk about improving their streaming backend (the few times I tried PSNow streaming I could measure input latency in seconds on my area.)
There are some combination packages that are cheaper now, especially if you shackle yourself to the service for a whole year, but overall, everything just seems more expensive now.
@UltimateOtaku91 For Sony gamers, it may well be better value for them to add extra tiers which ultimately does benefit their consumers and of course themselves but neither are the 'same' service.
This is literally a 'rebrand' of PSNow updated/modernised for the current generation. Obviously PSNow as it was didn't encourage people to subscribe but 'had' to subscribe to PS+ to play ALL the content on all the games released - inc some of Sony's own. Like Gold is 'required' on Xbox -so it makes sense to 'add' PSNow as 'tiers' to encourage more to pay more.
Game Pass is a 'separate' service and very different - you can buy a 'basic' version for your platform (Xbox, PC, Mobile) or buy Ultimate for ALL platforms, Streaming, EA Play, 'Gold' on console etc to have the freedom to play on 'any' compatible device anywhere as well as 'New' games EVERY month Day and Date from 1st, 3rd party devs, indie devs, 2nd party Xbox published games, id@xbox games etc as well as back catalogue games you may of missed or want to replay - some less than a few months after release like GotG but still great games you may of missed whilst still having newly released games added too - just not necessarily the highest budget, big shouty marketed new AAA games but still NEW release games.
A very different service, but different goals - Sony is a Sales Driven business - MS is more about 'reach' and player numbers - their game software reached 20m+ in week compared to an average 4-5m over its lifetime. Xbox is a part of a 'family' of devices their software and services 'reach' and they'd rather reach 25m+ than sell a few million to be the #1 selling game that week and only go on to sell 4m before its then given away to boost subscriber numbers 6/12 months later as Subscribers 'wait' instead of pay £70 to play it 'early'
I think this ps news is a bit overblown. Wasn't expecting much else, if anything I'm glad us asians are getting 'ps now' so to say, and nice to see pc gamepass expanding in asia as well.
@K1LLEGAL spot on 🤣
@BAMozzy dude do you have a blog or something similar? You always seem to put out these well thought, paragraphed messages that not many people seem to pay any attention to.
@BAMozzy yeah many people believe this is sonys answer to gamepass to which they will be disappointed if they do, I mean I suppose for those who just paid for playstation now it will cost them more but overall its more value, for ps plus currently it's £6.99 for 1 month and for playstation now as well its an extra £8.99 so to have both services right now it would cost you £15.98 per month, but ps plus essential gives you pretty much both (if your into ps4/ps5 games) at £10.99 or £13.49 for the premium that gives you more than you would now for both those services. So yeah it's worth the price and is a better deal than what they currently offer but it's still no gamepass simply for one reason which is day one exclusives which sony won't do, maybe 3-6 months later they get added I don't know. But people should stop comparing the two
Well this isnt a gamepass competitor. Merging the services together and when bought annually is cheaper with older games available. Plus the subscription size is already 51.2 million
Lol gotta love Greenie!!! The whole Xbox social media team is great. The value discrepancy between the two services is massive in Xboxs favour.
@BartoxTharglod
From July 2021 - February 2022 PS first party games were MIA.
PS has Horizon and GT right now and will add (maybe) God of War later this year as first party exclusives. MS has Starfield and maybe Redfall, with major new content for Flight Simulator, Sea of Thieves, and Halo Infinite as the year progresses.
Neither MS or Sony gamers lack games.
Next we'll have an epic games exec tweeting how they give away free games every month at NO CHARGE
Game Pass is great but this is such a tired debate.
Xbox Game Pass doesn't offer PlayStation games day 1 (or at all..) either so it just sounds a silly comparison.
Until we know the games included it’s hard to judge. We need more details.
Same as GPU until all these studios start pumping out regular exclusives it’s hard to know how good it is.
@roe Everybody that uses Minecraft on Switch, Android, iOS counts as a monthly active user for Xbox Live, because those versions require a Microsoft account. Since Minecraft has between 50-100 million monthly players, it's not that strange that Xbox Live has the same. I'd guess Xbox has around 55 million monthly active users across Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, 5 million from PC (Minecraft and Game Pass) and 40 million from Switch/iOS/Android.
Also pretty sure you need it to start shopping on the xbox store on 360, one and series consoles so comparing live with playstation plus is different.
Comparing live with psn accounts would be more accurate
@UltimateOtaku91 they are making a profit on gamepass and MS has already said that they want a healthy PlayStation and why didn’t MS try to outbid Sony when they bought Halo’s development company
@Benjiyeboy probably because bunjie had problems with Microsoft before or not interested as bunjie wanted to stay multiplatform, I even think bunjie will split from playstation somewhere down the line, bungie even split from there deal with Activision so wouldn't be surprised
@UltimateOtaku91 I guess you missed when xbox was about to buy square enix and Sony intervened. But when MS does it it's an issue and bullying the marke. Same old tired ass narrative.
@VokDaWiibSlayer don't know where you got your information from but square enix declined Microsofts offer because it was too low, Sony had nothing to do with it
https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2021/01/07/microsoft-tried-to-buy-nintendo-ea-square-enix-before-starting-xbox-13863966/amp/
@UltimateOtaku91 yes, a last minute clerical error that resulted in the doubling of the price the day of signing isnt suspicious at all. Lol delusional fanboys are... delusional. How about sony paying capcom money to keep resident evil 8 off gamepass then? More relevant and current any way and still demonstrates that your beloved plastic box manufacturer is indeed just as dirty as the next. Because it's a buisness, not a charity.
"Sony Deal is Apparently Keeping Resident Evil Village from Being on Xbox Game Pass" https://gamerant.com/resident-evil-village-xbox-game-pass-sony-deal/amp/
They consolidated their services, which is exactly what I expected of Sony. Typical lazy minimalistic move that squeezes more money out of some of their customers. Like with the upgrade option for games you have to pay a fee for. This company continues to be anti-consumer ... Which is exactly what Sony fanatics deserve, though. **cough**
@Darthroseman They also made PSNow streaming $120 a year when it used to be the default, so there's that, too!
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