Microsoft are very clearly putting most of their eggs in the Xbox Game Pass basket, as they look to make the subscription service the centrepiece of their business strategy going forward. Of course, with the success and the praise they they’ve garnered thanks to Xbox Game Pass, questions have been asked more than a few times whether their competitors – or Sony, more specifically – will ever try something similar.
According to industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities, however, that might not be a move that makes too much business sense for Sony.
Speaking recently in an interview with GamingBolt, when asked about whether he thinks Sony will have something ready to counter Game Pass, or whether they even need to do that, Pachter noted that they already have PlayStation Now, but it doesn’t compete with Xbox’s service because it doesn’t have as many new releases in its catalog.
“Well they have it, they just don’t market it very well,” Pachter said when asked if Sony will ever have something like Game Pass in their arsenal. “They have PS Now, they just don’t have as many games and they haven’t been putting their new releases on there. And that’s the problem, that their subscription doesn’t have new releases, and Microsoft’s does.”
Pachter, however, went on to say that either way, a subscription service like Game Pass – which he doesn’t think makes Microsoft a lot of money – wouldn’t make as much economic sense for Sony.
“So question is, will Sony walk down the Microsoft path?” Pachter said. “I’m not sure Microsoft makes money off that model, so I think that may be a bad business decision. I mean Microsoft has a lot of money in the bank, so they can do whatever they want, but Sony doesn’t have as much. So to give Sony credit, I think they are very good businesspeople, and they make intelligent business decisions. So there has to be a reason for why they haven’t done this yet, and that reason is probably that it doesn’t make as much economic sense.”
In the same interview, Pachter also spoke to us about the growth of Xbox next-gen, Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda, how he thinks Sony could hypothetically respond to it, what he thinks of the PS5 Digital Edition, and more. Read about all of it through the links.
Our full interview with Michael Pachter will go live soon, so stay tuned for that.