Phil Spencer: Sony's Xbox Game Pass competitor is "inevitable"

By Sean Carey,

Recently, a rumour suggested that Sony is developing its own Xbox Game Pass-style service. Now, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has commented on the potential rival subscription, saying it's an "inevitability" and it's the right thing to do to get games in the hands of more players.

A recent report from Jason Schreier over at Bloomberg claims that Sony is planning on combining its PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now services into a single subscription model to compete with Xbox Game Pass. The project, codenamed "Spartacus," is reportedly set to launch this spring and will include three different tiers.

Now, in an interview with IGN, Phil Spencer has revealed his thoughts on Spartacus, saying that it was inevitable and that he believes Sony will include new first-party releases in the subscription service on day one.

"I don't mean it to sound like we've got it all figured out, but I think the right answer is allowing your customers to play the games they wanna play, where they wanna play them, and giving them choice about how they build their library, and being transparent with them about what our plans are in terms of our PC initiatives and our cross-gen initiatives and other things," Spencer said. "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.

"I don't really look at it as validation. I actually, when I'm talking to our teams, I talk about it as an inevitability. 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.

"I like it because it feeds our energy on what are the next things that we should be working on as we continue to build out the things that we've done in the past. 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."

Do you see an Xbox Game Pass competitor from Sony as an inevitability too? Let us know your thoughts about the rumoured Spartacus subscription down in the comments.

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Written by Sean Carey

Avid Xbox and achievement fan, Sean has committed to playing the best RPGs, racing games, and first-person shooters Xbox Game Pass and his precious free time will allow. Prior to joining TrueAchievements, Sean gained a degree in journalism from Solent University.