Last week, Sony took a victory lap. The developer not only resurrected a franchise that many had assumed long past its peak, it did so with an exquisite game that rivals any other experience on any other console. God of War is not quite perfect, but it is close enough that it serves as an impressive achievement that could only be borne out of the decades of development Sony has put into its exclusive IPs and studios. It’s a triumph, and it continues to establish PlayStation as the premiere console — maybe even the premiere platform — for a certain kind of narrative and action-based single-player experience.
It got me thinking about Microsoft Game Pass, a subscription service on Xbox One that quickly became one of the best selling points of Microsoft’s platform. Game Pass costs $9.99 a month and gives you access to a wide library of 100+ games to play — the long-prophesied “Netflix of games” come nearly to life. It was already a good deal, but Microsoft recently made it a whole lot sweeter: it now also includes all Xbox One console exclusives going forward, the first of which was Sea of Thieves. That means you can play a range of new releases that would otherwise cost $60 for a low subscription price that also includes a bunch of other games.
Naturally, people began speculating about a Sony equivalent as soon as Microsoft announced Game Pass. The company already has something similar in the form of PlayStation Now, but that doesn’t include new releases. Which is too bad, because a straight copy of Game Pass on PS4 would be a shockingly good deal: you’d get games like SpiderMan, Detroit: Become Human, Ghosts of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part 2, etc. That’s a ton of games that fans are liable to buy for $60 at release for one subscription price, as well as an instantly impressive library for anyone with this theoretical service.
Which is, of course, why it won’t happen, and you don’t have to look much further than God of War to see why. God of War is a massive gaming event, dominating the conversation for at least the week of release and nabbing a top sales spot, to boot. It is an absolute must-buy for a certain kind of gamer that’s likely already gravitated to the PlayStation for games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Bloodborne or Nioh, and it’s likely not the only PlayStation exclusive that customer will buy this year. Sony, like Nintendo, has both a valuable set of consistently excellent IPs and an enthusiasm for making new ones, and it tends to sell a lot of games in the process. Lumping those games into a subscription would be turning the company’s crown jewels into loss leaders, and it’s not going to happen.
Microsoft is in a unique position when it comes to Game Pass for two reasons. For one thing, Xbox is not its core business: it has both the financial flexibility to try something like Game Pass and the incentive that many of these games are cross-buy as well, and that brings an advantage not just to console but to PC as well. For another, it’s exclusive studios just aren’t producing anything like God of War right now, and there aren’t likely to do so in the near future. So while the actual games might not be able to hang with the likes of Bloodborne and Horizon: Zero Dawn, including them with a subscription lets them punch a bit above their weight when it comes to encouraging system sales.
Sony is in a different position, and while I’d love to see some of Microsoft’s excellent Xbox improvements migrate to the PlayStation, this is one that’s just hard to see happening.