Xbox Boss Reacts to PS Plus, PS Now Rumours, Says It's the 'Right Answer'

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has responded to the rumours of Sony's plans to combine PlayStation Plus and PS Now into a single service, currently dubbed Project Spartacus. Whether it's a proper competitor or not to Microsoft's celebrated Game Pass membership still remains to be seen, but Spencer believes this sort of subscription service is the "right answer" for delivering games to consumers.

In a new interview with IGN, the Xbox head explains why he thinks a future with Game Pass-like services at the heart of it is the correct approach. Spencer speaks of allowing members to play the games they want to play wherever they like and allowing them to curate their own library of titles. "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."

Alongside the rumoured new service, Sony has been bringing a select few of its first-party titles to PC. God of War — the most recent port — recorded an impressive 75,000 concurrent players over the weekend.

However, while some will see the rumoured Project Spartacus as Sony's attempt to copy Game Pass, Spencer says he doesn't want to take the plaudits. Rather than considering it validation, he sees it as an inevitability that the industry will eventually take this route. "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."

Game Pass brings all of Xbox Game Studios' titles to the service on the same day they release, and contrary to comments made by Jim Ryan, Spencer actually believes Sony will do the same with Project Spartacus. "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."

Whenever Ryan has been asked about the possibility of Sony creating its own membership to rival Game Pass, the PlayStation CEO has always shied away from putting first-party titles on the service from day one. "We are not going to go down the road of putting new release 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 said back in 2020.

It certainly looks like Sony is planning to roll out its new service in the near future, however. Since the Bloomberg report was posted back in December, the company has pulled PS Now subscription cards from UK store shelves. In a recent Push Square poll, you voted "a large and growing catalogue of legacy games" would be the subscription's biggest selling point. "New, day one first-party games" was placed third, meaning it seems you know what to expect when Sony finally unveils what it has in store.

Source: PushSquare