That’s according to game designer and God of War director David Jaffe, who claims that some sort of “counterpunch to Game Pass” is in development at PlayStation HQ.
Since Microsoft introduced Xbox Game Pass in 2017, the launch of a similar subscription service on PlayStation consoles has been more or less inevitable – although as recently as September 2020, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan was ambiguous about its prospects.
“We have had this conversation before – we are not going to go down the road of putting new releases titles into a subscription model,” he told GamesIndustry at the time. “These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don’t see that as sustainable.”
Talking to Russian news website Tass about Microsoft’s subscription service in November, however, Ryan explained that “there is actually news to come, but just not today”. Which is also ambiguous, I know, but it’s context.
So now, citing “people at Sony who have told me that they are doing some stuff” in a livestream video on his YouTube channel, Jaffe insists that “there will be a response to Game Pass” but “what it is, we don’t know”. The relevant discussion starts at about 01:05:00, but you can skip the jump for a synopsis.
“I’ve said time and again that people writing Jim Ryan’s obituary are way premature. We had the guy on the show yesterday that had made the petition to fire Jim Ryan and I’m like dude, that’s way premature because Jim Ryan doesn’t owe anybody, Sony doesn’t owe anybody the truth about what’s coming and what their counterpunch to [Xbox] Game Pass is,” he says.
(Google turns up two different Change.org petitions to get Jim Ryan fired, and I dunno which one it is.)
“What I can tell you is I know they are doing some stuff, because I know people at Sony who have told me that they are doing some stuff. There will be a response to Game Pass. What it is, we don’t know.”
Less ambiguous? You decide. But with Xbox Game Pass clocking some 18 million subscribers and counting, Sony is not going to miss out on this cash forever.
Via VGC.