Xbox head Phil Spencer says a PlayStation version of Xbox Game Pass is inevitable

PlayStation's own version of Xbox Game Pass is "inevitable," according to Xbox CEO Phil Spencer. Spencer told IGN that Game Pass-style services suit various player interests and provide a freedom of choice that isn't available anywhere else, in response to recent rumors about the future of PlayStation Plus. He believes Sony will try to replicate Xbox's success with a similar service of its own.

"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,” he says.

"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.”

He goes on to say that the industry's shift to subscription-based services was inevitable. Now the question is who will be the most innovative or better that system in the future.

"When I'm talking to our teams, I talk about it as an inevitability,” Spencer says.  

“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.”

“Because I think the right answer is to ship great games, ship them on PC, ship them on console, ship them on a cloud, make them available day 1 in the subscription. And I expect that's what our competitor will do."

Xbox Game Pass has been one of Microsoft's most popular gaming initiatives in recent years. It's been hailed as a success by Xbox heavyweights, including Spencer, for offering players access to a large library of games at a reasonable cost.

PlayStation's desire to replicate that success with its own subscription service, codenamed Spartacus, was originally mentioned in a Bloomberg report last year, although it came as little surprise to many. A subscription service that integrates you into a console's ecosystem while also motivating you to continue with it by constantly providing you with new titles to play has proven appealing to both users and console manufacturers.

The bigger concern, as Spencer alluded to above, is how PlayStation will deploy the service and what additional features it would offer over Xbox Game Pass. According to Bloomberg, one of the console's main features will be access to previous PS1, PS2, and PS3 games.

It appears that we will learn more details in the near future. The recent removal of PlayStation Now subscription cards from UK and US retail locations, as well as the emergence of PS3 games in the PS5's store earlier this week, indicate that changes to the service are on the way. The announcement that PlayStation Now and PlayStation Plus will be integrated into Spartacus could be the most significant move.