After Xbox’s appearance at Gamescom 2024, fans are wondering about the future of one of its biggest selling points, the Game Pass on PS5. One of the standout moments came when it was confirmed that MachineGames’ highly anticipated Indiana Jones title would be coming to PlayStation 5 early next year, after its initial launch on Xbox and PC in December.
This announcement follows several other first-party games heading to PlayStation, including Doom: The Dark Ages in June and four other titles in February, including Pentiment and Grounded.
The Possibility of Game Pass on PS5 Grows
This trend of once-exclusive games eventually coming to Playstation has led many fans to speculate about the possibility of the Game Pass service making its way to PS5 as well, eventually.
Phil Spencer, the company’s gaming boss, made some interesting comments during a podcast earlier this year, where he mentioned the company’s strategy to keep expanding its gaming ecosystem across various platforms.
While he did not specifically mention PlayStation in his recent Gamescom remarks, the growing number of Xbox games on PlayStation has led to talks among fans who believe that Game Pass on Playstation could be inevitable one day.
Spencer’s comments at Gamescom highlighted the publisher’s commitment to making its games and platforms as strong as possible. He said that while the platform’s player numbers and franchise strength are at an all-time high, Xbox remains focused on growing its presence across consoles, PC, and cloud.
This broad strategy is seen as a way to ensure long-term success, especially in an industry facing significant challenges, such as massive layoffs and evolving distribution models.
Xbox’s Expanding Strategy and the Potential for Game Pass on Rival Consoles
The idea of Game Pass arriving on PlayStation isn’t entirely new. Back in December, the publisher’s CFO Tim Stuart hinted at the company’s ambition to bring Game Pass to every screen that can play games.
While Spencer later clarified that there were no plans to bring the service to rival platforms, the ongoing strategic moves by the brand have kept the possibility alive in the minds of fans.
Game Pass has become a game-changer for the company, offering day-one access to every new first-party title and a vast library of games for a monthly subscription fee.
The service’s reach expanded further when Xbox Live Gold members were automatically upgraded to Game Pass Core in September last year, boosting subscriber numbers.
Sony has its own subscription service that offers a massive amount of games, so it is rather unlikely that they would let Game Pass be on their consoles unless there was a big upside to it.
Nintendo on the other hand, might be more open to such a notion, given that besides Nintendo Switch Online offering a lot of classic games for free, they don’t have their own subscription service that offers hundreds of modern AAA games at a monthly cost.
Do you think Game Pass could eventually come to Playstation or the Nintendo Switch? Let us know in the comments below.
