Sony's upcoming overhaul of the PlayStation Plus subscription service may sound a bit like Xbox Game Pass, but there's one important distinction: first-party exclusive games will not be added to PlayStation Plus on the day they release (at least not yet).
Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said: "[In terms of] putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release... as you well know, this is not a road that we've gone down in the past. And it's not a road that we're going to go down with this new service. We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want."
That makes it pretty clear: God of War Ragnarök will not be available day one on PlayStation Plus. Nor should we expect brand new games from the likes of Naughty Dog, Insomniac, or Guerrilla to arrive on the service the day they launch.
At least, not for now. Ryan said, "I don't want to cast anything in stone at this stage. All I'm talking to today is the approach we're taking in the short term. The way our publishing model works right now, it doesn't make any sense. But things can change very quickly in this industry, as we all know."
While it is a marked difference from Game Pass, Ryan's reasoning is understandable, given that Sony's first-party outings currently have a tendency towards being self-contained single player games with little in the way of microtransactions (which remain a way to make money in a service like Game Pass). However, with the company looking to make "more than 10" live service games by 2026, it's possible we'll see that stance shift.
Sony has just today announced the new version of PlayStation Plus, which will offer three different subscription tiers. The basic is the same service we have today, but higher tiers will offer hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games, as well as access to retro games from previous PlayStation generations across both downloads and streaming.
Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.