Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation President/CEO, Jim Ryan, claims that PS Plus is a more “meaningful” subscription service than Xbox Game Pass.
During a Q&A session with analysts (revealed via leaked FTC vs Microsoft court case documents), Jim Ryan was presented with a question regarding the Xbox Game Pass business model, and how it posed challenges for Microsoft when it came to bringing AAA titles with budgets of $100 million or more to the subscription service.
Ryan was asked whether Microsoft would need to provide minimum revenue guarantees to publishers if it wanted those titles on Xbox Game Pass, or whether it would need to go out and buy more assets like Activision to put on its platform. The PlayStation President responded by saying that he’s certain Microsoft has already attempted to offer publishers a minimum revenue guarantee, and that it did not work at all. He claimed that this, in turn, has driven the software giant to make large acquisitions.
Ryan claims to have spoken to all publishers about Xbox Game Pass, and, according to him, they unanimously do not like Game Pass because it is value destructive, not only on an individual title-basis, but also on an industry level. He pointed to the recent number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers that Microsoft had announced in January, 2023, which amounted to 25 million users. While he said that others may have a different view on the matter, Ryan had personally expected a larger number, given all the money Microsoft had spent on the service. Furthermore, he pointed out that PS Plus currently has close to 50 million subscribers, and he believes that PlayStation’s subscription service is meaningful, implying that Xbox Game Pass isn’t.
On the subject of whether Sony had targeted Activision as a potential acquisition, Ryan compared the 69 billion dollars spent by Microsoft on acquiring Activision versus the 3.6 billion dollars spent by Sony on acquiring Bungie. He believes that Bungie can give PlayStation “way more” than the 69 billion dollars worth of Activision, and that’s before considering the relative value of the transaction.
