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Bandwidth: PlayStation’s Xbox Game Pass competitor shapes up, Luna adding Sonic Colors

Subscriptions have become incredibly popular for gaming in recent years, and Xbox Game Pass has become king. Now, Sony is ramping up for its own version of Game Pass, with a subscription library and cloud games for the PlayStation. Now, some of the first details are coming out.

Bandwidth is 9to5Google’s weekly look at the cloud gaming market beyond Google’s own Stadia platform. Every Friday, we take a look at the biggest news regarding services such as Nvidia GeForce Now, Amazon Luna, PlayStation Now, and Xbox Game Pass, among others. Come back weekly and don’t forget to check out Stadia Changelog, our weekly roundup of everything new on Stadia.

Here’s what PlayStation’s version of Game Pass will look like

It was first reported last year that Sony had plans for a single united subscription offer to better compete with Xbox Game Pass, but for its PlayStation audience. Now, a new report from GamesBeat has more details. Apparently, this new subscription will come in three tiers at $10, $13, and $16 per month.

The most affordable tier is known as “Essentials,” and offers monthly games. It seems as though this might replace the existing PlayStation Plus, but there’s no concrete word on how it will handle online play. Namely, whether or not that will require a separate payment. Xbox Game Pass includes Live, which costs $10/month on its own. With PlayStation undercutting Microsoft’s $15/month price, it could go either way.

Beyond that, the “Extra” plan includes everything from Essentials, but also the library that PlayStation Now long integrated, but it sounds as though that may only be for local downloads.

The “Premium” tier would be the option that delivers cloud gaming for classic titles and, apparently, game trials. GamesBeat broke down the feature layout here:

PS+ Premium gets you all of the above and then everything else for $16 per month. That everything else includes PS Now’s streaming capabilities. You also get a library of “classic games” as well as a new “game trials” feature. Game trials enables you to download and start playing the full versions of new PlayStation games.

Apparently, Sony’s take on Game Pass for PlayStation could be announced as soon as next month.

Amazon Luna is getting Sonic Colors Ultimate

Amazon announced two new games for Luna this week, with Sonic Colors Ultimate coming to the Luna+ subscription sometime in March. Further, Joggernauts is coming to the Luna Family Channel also in March.

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