The codename for Sony’s revamped subscription service, Project Spartacus, always had a certain irony about it. Like the most famous scene in Stanley Kubrick’s biopic of the rebellious Roman slave, platform holders and publishers from Amazon to Ubisoft have stood up in turn to announce that they are Spartacus, the leaders of the subscription revolution, while Sony itself has continued to sit quietly. When in late March the Japanese company finally decided to speak up and join the chorus, revealing the new direction for its PlayStation Plus and Now services, the result was akin to a mumbled “it’s complicated”.
Plus’s reincarnation in June will come in three flavours: the vanilla Plus subscription and two higher tiers, Extra and Premium, that fold in elements of PS Now and other bonuses. Extra, the middle option, offers a library of “up to 400” PS4 and PS5 games to download, while a Premium sub scoops in a few hundred games from older systems, cloud streaming, and time-limited trials of new releases. Conspicuous by its absence is any promise of release-day additions to the service, particularly firstparty games.
Sony’s assertion is that its production model is incompatible with a full Game Passstyle subscription. , described the company’s
