For a long time, we’ve been hearing rumors of a new Sony service codenamed Spartacus that’s being propped up as an Xbox Game Pass rival. It has finally arrived in the form of two new PS Plus tiers. However, for now, they don’t look like they are posing a big challenge to the Game Pass.
Starting this June, PS Plus subscriptions will be divided into three tiers. The first one among them will be called PlayStation Plus Essential and include the same benefits as the current membership. These include 2 free games every month, online multiplayer access, and cloud storage for saved games. It will continue to cost $9.99 monthly or $59.99 yearly.
The first new tier is PlayStation Plus Extra and will cost $14.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly. Apart from all the benefits of the Essential tier, it will add access to a catalog of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games, including those developed by first-party and third-party studios.
And then comes the PlayStation Plus Premium tier, which will cost $17.99 monthly or $119.99 yearly. Aside from everything on offer through the Essential and Extra tiers, this subscription will offer access to PS3 games via cloud streaming and a host of classic PlayStation, PS2, and PSP games for download as well as streaming. Time-limited game trials will also be available.
Sony says that it plans to include biggies like Death Stranding, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Mortal Kombat 11, and Returnal in the benefits of the two new tiers. However, there has been no mention of day-one releases on either of the two tiers, which is where the Xbox Game Pass has PS Plus beat. Big first-party and third-party releases arrive on the Microsoft service on day one of their respective releases at no extra cost.
With these new PS Plus tiers, the PlayStation Now service will now get merged into the subscriptions, and users subscribed to it will migrate to PlayStation Plus Premium with no increase to their current subscription fees at launch.