Sony president Jim Ryan reiterated it will not compete with Xbox Games Pass. Following the PS5 showcase event, Ryan says he doesn’t believe in the model.
Playstation Chief Jim Ryan says he knows they have the content. He also says he believes in generational leaps, that they “are not going to go down the road of putting new releases into a subscription model.”
Xbox Games Pass is a success so far
The Xbox Games Pass model has become a pro-consumer pick over the past few months. Following a Games as a Service (GaaS) model, the Games Pass is thriving. The Netflix-style “play whatever you want” is great for people who want to test games out.
The Games Pass has a ton of games to choose from. Many of these titles are even Xbox AAA games coming out at launch. It lets consumers enjoy their favorite games, all for a nominal fee.
Even with the Games Pass increasing its prices, it’s still economical. The economy of the pass is especially great for people who can’t shell out $60 outright. With the next-gen games priced at $70, Xbox’s subscription model is a superb solution.
PS Chief says subscription models “not sustainable”
While the Games Pass model sounds enticing, it’s also something Playstation won’t do. Xbox is killing it with the Games Pass, but Jim Ryan can’t see any upsides to it.
Ryan doesn’t see the Games Pass as something that Sony will emulate. In particular, he refers to the sustainability of such a model. He’s been vehement about his opposition for the longest time, and his views haven’t changed.
“For us, having a catalogue of games is not something that defines a platform,” Ryan says in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz. “Our pitch, as you’ve heard, is ‘new games, great games.’ We have had this conversation before – we are not going to go down the road of putting new releases 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.
“We want to make the games bigger and better, and hopefully at some stage more persistent. So putting those into a subscription model on day one, for us, just doesn’t make any sense.
For others in a different situation, it might well make sense, but for us it doesn’t. We want to expand and grow our existing ecosystem, and putting new games into a subscription model just doesn’t sit with that.”
It’s no secret that Ryan doesn’t like the idea of putting AAA and first-party titles on subscription. He said in the past that he wants their first-party games treated as big events.
“It’s an area that is fast changing and fluid,” detailed Ryan in a separate interview. “The nature and scale of some of the first party games that we are making leads us to think that, right now, it’s better to spend energy on making sure that the launch of those games is a massive entertainment event. I would cite God of War and Spider-Man, and The Last of Us 2 next year will fall into that category.”
The interviews offer more nuggets into the mindset of Jim Ryan and how he wants to steer Sony into the future. So far, it’s a future of exclusivity for the platform.
Featured image courtesy of Playstation/Youtube Screenshot