Today Sony announced that playstation plus It would become a subscription service starting in June, which will offer three plans with different benefits. The new PS Plus comes to compete with Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch Online, but Jim Ryan he does not believe that these services are the future of the video game industry.
Over the past few years we’ve seen the Xbox Game Pass subscription service become a mainstay for Microsoft, so the new PS Plus isn’t a surprise, especially considering that Sony currently has 48 million subscribers. However, Jim Ryan believes that these types of services cannot reach the level of Spotify or Netflix.
Subscriptions have certainly grown in importance over the course of the last few years. Our number of PlayStation Plus subscribers has grown from zero in 2010, to 48 million now… but the gaming medium is so different from music and linear entertainment, I don’t think we’ll see the levels we see with Spotify or Netflix. ”.
Related: Xbox’s Phil Spencer trusts PlayStation and Nintendo but not other companies.
Jim Ryan, CEO of PlayStation, admits that some modern games that drive subscription models have been very successful, as we’ve seen with Final Fantasy XIV, but believes that the next dominant game in the industry will be games as a service. “The phenomenon of games as a service… that has, in large part, fueled the enormous growth that we have seen in the video game industry in the last ten years”.
Jim Ryan’s approach is totally opposite to that of Phil Spencer, who a few months ago said that PlayStation could not compete with Xbox Game Pass. At the time, Spencer said that the focus of Xbox Game Pass was on convenience and mass consumption, which has been reflected with Xbox Cloud Gaming, which brings video games to almost all devices.
Read more: Jim Ryan: Why PS Plus won’t get PS4 and PlayStation 5 releases.
While Jim Ryan believes that video game subscription services are not going to reach the level of Spotify or Netflix, Phil Spencer plans to take Xbox Game Pass to this height. In fact, Spencer feels so confident that they’re doing things right that he thinks PlayStation Plus will follow Xbox Game Pass’ lead.