Rumors have been going around that PlayStation is looking to phase out PlayStation now in favor of coming up with their own extensive gaming library not unlike Xbox’s Game Pass. When asked about this project (apparently codenamed Spartacus), Xbox head Phil Spencer had nothing but optimism to say about their rivals coming up with their new subscription service.
Talking to IGN, Spencer says:
“I don’t mean it to sound like we’ve got it all figured out, but I think the right answer is allowing your customers to play the games they wanna play, where they wanna play them, and giving them choice about how they build their library, and being transparent with them about what our plans are in terms of our PC initiatives and our cross-gen initiatives and other things… So when I hear others doing things like Game Pass or coming to PC, it makes sense to me because I think that’s the right answer.”
Though the PlayStation may be winning in terms of exclusives with titles like God of War and The Last of Us, Xbox has definitely been leading at the technology front, with the Series X boasting complete backwards compatibility and the Game Pass offering so much more with their stacked library.
Word has it that with PlayStation’s Spartacus, there is the aim to dissolve PlayStation Now and have it fused with PlayStation Plus—also with the goal of giving players access to older games in the PlayStation library.
Though there is a rivalry going on between Xbox and PlayStation users, Spencer remains positive, and shares, “When I’m talking to our teams, I talk about it as an inevitability… So for us, we should continue to innovate, continue to compete, because the things that we’re doing might be advantages that we have in the market today, but they’re just based on us going first, not that we’ve created something that no one else can go create.”
We don’t know when PlayStation is set to announce this Spartacus, but maybe we can get a look when State of Play 2022 hits on Jan. 24.
