PS5 answer to Game Pass may land next week with ‘splashy line-up’

Sony is preparing to announce its revamped PS5 subscription service, with the Xbox Game Pass rival potentially arriving next week, according to a report.

Bloomberg says the long mooted Project Spartacus service, which would potentially be a much improved combination of the current PS Plus and PS Now services, is almost ready for prime time.

The service would launch with a “splashy line-up of hit games from recent years,” according to the sources of well-informed games journalists Jason Schreier and Takashi Mochizuki.

The pair reiterated Bloomberg’s earlier reporting on the matter, which has claimed the service will have various tiers available, with at least one offering access to an archive of PlayStation classics from the vault.

However, those hoping the service is more of a direct rival to Game Pass by offering day one access to first party games, are likely to be disappointed.

God of War Ragnarok, for example, is not scheduled to be available as part of Sony’s offering, the report says. That’s a far cry from the way Xbox Game Studios has handled AAA titles like Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite.

Today’s report doesn’t bring any news on pricing for the service and its various tiers, so that’ll be something to play close attention to next week if Sony does choose to show its hand. The company will have to go some to match the proposition offered by Xbox Game Pass though.

It’s also unclear whether Sony will seek to include games from third-party studios within the plan, or whether it’ll strike a deal to include EA Play, like Microsoft was able to with Xbox Game Pass.

As of right now Sony hasn’t called the media’s attention to any event or live stream to debut the service and, given the level of anticipation surrounding Project Spartacus, we’d expect Sony to make a song and dance about it.