People familiar with the matter said That Sony is preparing to launch a new video game subscription service for PlayStation consoles as early as next week.
The game service, code-named Spartacus, is under development, Sony's response to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass. Xbox Game Pass, a cross-platform subscription service for video games, has amassed more than 25 million users.
People familiar with the matter pointed out that Sony's subscription new service will combine its two current products, namely PlayStation Now and PlayStation Plus. Customers will be able to choose from multiple tiers, both to play today's hits, classic games from previous generations of PlayStation consoles.
Sony may even include a slew of AAA gaming hits in recent years in the Sparacus subscription service, including First-Party Studio Naughty Dog and Santa Monica's The Last Survivor and God of War 4.
On top of that, the premium Spartacus service even allows players to stream and play games over the Internet for free, think you're streaming Uncharted on your phone.
In recent years, Sony's PlayStation game console sales have surpassed Microsoft's Xbox, but Sony's construction of network services lags far behind Microsoft. Xbox Game Pass offers hundreds of games to console and PC players at a subscription price of $10 per month.
One of the biggest selling points of Xbox Game Pass is that subscribers can play new games the same day they go on sale, including this year's highly anticipated sci-fi game "Starfield," from Bethesda, which was just acquired by Microsoft.
Given that the service has just launched, Sony is likely to be at a disadvantage in terms of maturity and number of users. The Spartacus service is also not expected to include the latest games at the outset.
One person familiar with the program said the upcoming God of War: Twilight of the Gods is unlikely to be immediately available on the Spartacus platform.