Sony Prepares a Response to Game Pass, Suggests God of War Dev
In a video posted on his YouTube channel, David Jaffe, who worked on the God of War and Twisted Metal series, among others, revealed that Sony is working on some sort of larger move to counter Xbox Game Pass. However, it's not clear what exactly it is.
Xbox Game Pass subscription, often referred to as "Netflix for gaming," is becoming increasingly popular among gamers. Earlier, this year we learned that more than 18 million people have subscribed to the service. It's no surprise, then, that more and more questions are being asked about whether Sony - Microsoft's most direct competitor in the digital entertainment market - intends to respond to the subscription in a more concrete way than the cloud-based PlayStation Now and the modest PlayStation Plus Collection, which consists of just 20 titles.
As recently as last September, Jim Ryan - head of Sony Interactive Entertainment - shunned the idea, explaining that it would not be profitable (via GamesIndustry.biz). But just two months later in an interview with the Russian agency TASS, he suggested that his team has an ace up its sleeve. He stressed that it was too early for any details at the time. Now, David Jaffe, a game designer known for his work on such famous series as God of War (he was the director and scriptwriter of the first installment) and Twisted Metal, has returned to this topic. In his latest YouTube video, which focused on the rumored collaboration between Hideo Kojima and Microsoft, he revealed, citing his own sources at Sony, that an Xbox Game Pass game is in the pipeline (said at 1:06:00 in the video below).
"We had the guy on the show yesterday that had made the petition to fire Jim Ryan and I was like, ‘dude, that’s way premature’ because Jim Ryan doesn’t owe anybody, Sony doesn’t owe anybody, the truth about what’s coming and what their counterpunch to Game Pass is. What I can tell you is I know they are doing some stuff (...). There will be a response to Game Pass."
Unfortunately, Jaffe failed to find out what this answer would look like. He noted that in his opinion if it is limited to emulation of games from PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 and adding, for example, the ability to stream videos, it will not be the right move (via VGC).
Jaffe's words can certainly be intriguing. The question is, how much truth there is in them and will Sony actually surprise with an idea that will be able to shake up the market a bit? Let's hope that everything will become clear soon.
