Sony Reveals PlayStation Now Will Never Have Xbox Game Pass' Biggest Feature

Sony has been making some big moves with PlayStation Now recently. The biggest of these moves was the price reduction, which slashed the price of the service in half to just $10 a month, the same price of its biggest space competitor, Xbox Game Pass. That said, according to PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, Sony is taking PlayStation Now very serious, which is why it's going to be such a big part of the brand as it transitions from PS4 to PS5. However, there is one killer Xbox Game Pass feature that Sony has no intentions of adding to PlayStation Now: releasing its big exclusives into PlayStation Now when said titles launch.

As you may know, all games from Xbox Games Studios launch on Xbox Game Pass when they release. In the past, this meant Xbox Game Pass owners got to play the likes of Gears 5 and Sea of Thieves at their release, and in the future this will mean they get to play games like Halo Infinite right when the sci-fi shooter releases. PlayStation has no intentions with doing this with its own games. The games could eventually come to PlayStation Now, but not at launch.

"It's an area that is fast changing and fluid," said Ryan when asked by GamesIndustry about PlayStation exclusives launching onto PlayStation Now the day of their release. "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."

Ryan continued:

"That's where we stand right now. But our stance on the inclusion of first-party games in PS Now in terms of what we've done this month is very different to our stance 12 months ago. I don't want to say this is what PS Now is going to be like forever. But certainly right now, given how some of our first party IP is incredibly special and valuable, we just want to treat them with amazing care and respect, and have those launches be clean and pure."

In short, while Sony is committed to the future of PlayStation Now, it's clearly not as committed as Microsoft is to Xbox Game Pass, who has been increasingly putting lots of its eggs into the Xbox Game Pass basket.