Sony reportedly plans to launch its answer to Xbox Game Pass this spring

Xbox Game Pass has been a hit for Microsoft, and it seems Sony is preparing to respond with its own version of an all-in-one game subscription service. The company is planning to merge PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now into a new offering, which is expected to debut this spring, according to Bloomberg.

The service, which is code-named Spartacus, would likely be available on PS4 and PS5 for a monthly fee. It's unclear whether players would be able to access it on other devices, though the report notes Sony is putting more resources into cloud gaming. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate allows players to delve into more than a hundred Xbox titles via cloud gaming on consoles, PC, phones and tablets. Microsoft plans to make game streaming sticks for TVs too.

It seems Sony will kill PlayStation Now, but keep the PlayStation Plus branding. Sony may not yet have finalized how Spartacus will work, but there could be three tiers to the service. According to documents viewed by Bloomberg, the lowest tier would effectively be PlayStation Plus as it is now. The second level would add a "large catalog" of PS4 titles, with PS5 games joining later. A third tier would include cloud gaming, expanded demos and, akin to Nintendo Switch Online, a bunch of older PS1, PS2, PS3 and even PSP games.

It's not clear whether Sony plans to bring its first-party exclusives to the service, as Microsoft does with its titles on Game Pass. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said last year that the company wouldn't "go down the road of putting new releases titles into a subscription model. These games cost many millions of dollars, well over $100 million, to develop. We just don't see that as sustainable."

But the landscape has shifted since Ryan's remarks. For one thing, Microsoft bought Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media this year. All of Bethesda's games (save for couple of timed PS5 console exclusives like Deathloop) are on Game Pass, and future Bethesda titles like Starfield might not come to PlayStation at all.

Although Game Pass would likely be Sony's biggest competitor in the game subscription market, it'll be up against several other major companies. EA and Ubisoft have subscription services, Amazon launched Luna last year and Netflix added games to its existing plans. As for cloud gaming (a category Luna also falls into), there's NVIDIA's GeForce Now and Google Stadia, and even Samsung has cloud gaming ambitions.

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