Head of Xbox Phil Spencer: Game Pass model is “the right answer”, calls PlayStation version “a necessity”

Rumors of Sony launching a new game subscription service for PlayStation that could rival Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass have been floating around for years, but credible reports actually give some truth to the project. sentence back in december.

Now, with some steam surrounding the new service, codenamed Spartacus, Xbox head Phil Spencer has weighed in, calling the launch of Sony’s Game Pass competitor “an inevitable one” “.

When talking to Ryan McCaffrey of IGN, Spencer claims this is not to prove that launching Game Pass is a good move and more that this method of distributing games to players is how the industry will evolve as innovation continues. .

“I don’t really take that as confirmation. I actually, when talking to our teams, I talk about it as inevitable, “Spencer speak. “So for us, we should keep innovating, keep competing, because the things we’re doing may be the advantage we have in today’s market, but they’re just based on that. it’s not that we went ahead, it’s not that we created something that no one else could create. ”

Spencer, who has long addressed issues surrounding games and their availability over time, particularly notes Game Pass and the innovations it has brought that have helped the game industry grow things. new, while building on projects from the past.

Through Game Pass, Microsoft began publishing titles on PC and console simultaneously and now allows users to access hundreds of games, whether they’re doing it from Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC or even through the cloud on a mobile device. And in this case, it all came down to building backwards compatibility on Xbox and wanting a way to bring the game to more players.

“I don’t mean like we’ve figured it all out, but I think the right answer is to let your customers play the games they want to play, where they want to play, and give them choices about how they want to play. build their library and be transparent with them about our plans regarding our PC initiatives and our cross-generational initiatives and other things,” Spencer said. speak. “So when I hear other people doing things like Game Pass or coming to PC, it means a lot to me because I think that’s the right answer.”

Regarding Sony’s subscription service, which is reported to be a three-tier model that will replace the current PlayStation Plus version, Spencer said that he expects it to be PC-slanted and available day by day for titles. Sony’s first-party games.

It is true that Sony has slowly moved some of its biggest successes from the PlayStation 4 era to PC, such as the recent release God of War, there is always a significant lag between their console and PC releases. And early reports surrounding the Spartacus project assert that Sony doesn’t expect to put its larger game releases day by day on the mature service.

This information may be dated and Sony may have shifted its priority to driving subscriptions over operating a new subscription model and driving first-party sales, however, we won’t know more. about publishing plans or PlayStation backward compatibility until the service is officially announced.