New details about PlayStation Game Pass rival, code-named Spartacus, and its tiers have surfaced. According to known insider and journalist Jeff Grubb, the service might launch soon and will come with three tiers ranging between $10 and $16. Speaking on his (paywalled) Giantbomb show Grubbsnax (transcript via Video Games Chronicle), Grubb revealed that the three tiers are internally called Essential, Extra, and Premium, and cost $10, $13, and $16 per month, respectively.
What PlayStation Game Pass rival’s tiers may include
Grubb likened the Premium tier to EA Play in that it’ll offer full game trials alongside classic games and cloud streaming. He’s not sure if Sony will offer a full game trial for every single game that comes out or not but implied that PlayStation first-party games could be part of this tier. Grubb claims that Essential and Extra tiers will not offer cloud streaming.
“I don’t know what classic games means, but I do know that it’s a major part of this premium tier,” Grubb said. “For the Extra tier, you get a ‘downloadable game catalogue’ – anything on PS Now that was downloadable seems like it would be in here.” As for the Essential tier, it’s reportedly just PS Plus as we know it. “It’s probably getting pretty close to this actually launching, something’s probably going to happen by the end of this month and I don’t think that necessarily means publicly, I think in terms of the internal milestone of where the service needs to be,” Grubb added.
Opinion: PlayStation Game Pass rival must offer value for money
Zarmena writes… Grubb seemingly corroborated reports that PS Now will be folded into Spartacus, which makes sense. But I sincerely hope the Premium tier will offer more value than what I’m reading and goes beyond full game trials. It might be hard for Sony to compete with Microsoft, who’s pretty good at making up for potential losses, so it remains to be seen what we get here in the end.
In other news, A Fallout: New Vegas sequel has been rumored, and The Ascent has been confirmed for PS5 and PS4.