Per Venture Beat, retailers in the U.K. are receiving messages from Sony that request to pull PlayStation Now cards off shelves, which can mean that the company is setting something big in the next coming months. One of the messages from U.K. retailer Game leadership reads: “[s]tores have until the close of day Wednesday 19, January to remove all POS and ESD cards from all customer-facing areas.”
PS Now is a cloud-streaming and game subscription service that gives members access to some games from the PlayStation library. PS Now is separate from the PlayStation Plus, the latter being a service that gives members access to online play and discounts on the PSN store.
A report by Bloomberg claims that Sony is planning to create its own Game Pass, reportedly codenamed Spartacus. Per the report, Sony intends to combine PS Now with PS plus into one subscription, letting users pay monthly for access to a variety of older and modern titles. The report also suggests that Sony wants to roll out Spartacus sometime in the spring, and wants it to be accessed on both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. With Sony removing PS Now cards from stores, it adds more credence that Sony does intend to bring in a new service to replace PS Now.
Game Pass is Xbox’s video game subscription service that gives members access to Microsoft’s large library of games, many of which they can play via streaming. The service has proven to be a big hit for Microsoft, and it makes all the sense in the world for Sony to try to capture that same kind of success with PlayStation.
