PlayStation is launching a subscription service to compete with Microsoft's wildly popular Xbox Game Pass

• Sony unveiled a new video game subscription service for PlayStation owners on Tuesday.
• The service is intended to compete with Microsoft's wildly popular Xbox Game Pass service.

Sony unveiled its long-rumored video game subscription service Tuesday morning.

The $15-per-month offering — which extends the existing PlayStation Plus monthly membership plan into two new, more expensive tiers — is intended as Sony's counterbalance to Microsoft's wildly popular Xbox Game Pass service.

With the PlayStation Plus "Extra" tier, PlayStation 4 and 5 console owners will be able to access "a catalog of up to 400 of the most enjoyable PS4 and PS5 games," Sony said in a press release. That games catalog, which includes major first-party hits like "God of War" and "Marvel's Spider-Man," will be available for download only.

In order to stream those games via the cloud, users will have to pay $18/month for the PlayStation Plus "Premium" tier.

In addition to cloud streaming functionality, the highest paid tier adds an additional 340 games from the original PlayStation, the PlayStation 2, the PlayStation Portable handheld, and the PlayStation 3.

The big updates to the PlayStation Plus service that Sony announced on Tuesday, which currently costs $10/month in exchange for two free games and a handful of other benefits, has been long-rumored.

Despite Sony's success with the PlayStation 5, which has been sold out almost permanently since its launch in November 2020, Microsoft has had runaway success with its Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

As of January 2022, the service had over 25 million paid subscribers: With a minimum subscription price of $10 per month, Microsoft is pulling in roughly $250 million every month from its video game subscription service. At that pace, Xbox Game Pass subscriptions are positioned to rake in approximately $4 billion between January 2022 and January 2023.

When Sony's service launches this June, it will arrive in Asia first, the blog post said, "followed by North America, Europe and the rest of the world where PlayStation Plus is offered." The goal is to have it fully operational by the end of the first half of 2022, Sony said.

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