For a lot of gamers, the idea of PlayStation Now, Sony’s short lived Instant Game Collection via PlayStation Plus and Microsoft’s Game Pass has been something of a blessing. Now you can get a lot of content, similar to a streaming service, without paying a lot of money, with the catch being you don’t own it. Where Microsoft took it to another level was by revealing their exclusives are available from the service on release, something gamers were hopeful Sony would also adopt.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan comments on these titles being offered by PlayStation Now, primarily PlayStation Now exclusives.
“It’s an area that is fast changing and fluid,” notes Ryan. “The nature and scale of some of the first party games that we are making leads us to think that, right now, it’s better to spend energy on making sure that the launch of those games is a massive entertainment event. I would cite God of War and Spider-Man, and The Last of Us 2 next year will fall into that category.
“That’s where we stand right now. But our stance on the inclusion of first party games in PlayStation Now in terms of what we’ve done this month is very different to our stance 12 months ago. I don’t want to say this is what PlayStation Now is going to be like forever. But certainly right now, given how some of our first party IP is incredibly special and valuable, we just want to treat them with amazing care and respect, and have those launches be clean and pure.”
Jim Ryan to GameIndustry
While the comment is interesting, in the sense that PlayStation Now has changed and seems to have a willingness to adapt to be successful, the end result is not surprising.
Given the number of titles Sony creates, their cost and overall demand, it would be similar to Nintendo taking a loss to potentially gain a guarantee revenue stream. All it would take is two titles to break even, something that becomes even easier with Sony’s robust first party PlayStation line up and it would likely be a net loss. Still, long term, we may see these titles come there sooner or more of a willingness to go there sometime in the future.
Let’s all hope that PlayStation Now will have exclusives similar to Xbox Game Pass.
