Since the advent of gaming systems with online digital services, Sony has been among the companies at the forefront of this development. They did launch their PlayStation Network digital service in time with the introduction of their PS3 console, and the online platform expanded with every succeeding version of the PlayStation, as well as derivatives like the PSP and Vita. Like their rival/contemporary Microsoft and their Xbox Live, Sony has a paid subscription service on PSN to avail of premium features, the PlayStation Plus tier. And recently the PS Network leaked a new perk for PlayStation Plus subscribers: streaming movies.

Forbes has it that Sony may have a value-added feature for their premium-tier PlayStation Plus service on the PSN, one that will remind PS4 and PS5 users that their console’s creator, Sony, is also an international media provider. This feature probably is not yet ready to be announced; all the same, word of the new “PlayStation Plus Video Pass” started going around after the official Sony PlayStation website for Poland briefly posted a page promoting the feature on Wednesday, April 21…then removed it. Keeping the thing secret seems difficult considering when this Video Pass is supposed to launch in Poland.

The page information described PlayStation Plus Video Pass as a limited-time new benefit for subscribers of that tier on PlayStation Network. Beginning on April 22 this year until the same day in 2022, this trial service will enable PS Plus subscribers to watch a selected library of films on digital streaming. The Polish PS page even showed banners of sample movies that can be seen on Video Pass, all of them productions of Sony Pictures: 2018’s “Venom,” 2019’s “Zombieland: Double Tap” and last year’s “Bloodshot.” It seems safe to say that Sony Pictures and its studios will be providing the content for Video Pass in the year of its implementation.

Sony’s idea of a Video Pass for their PlayStation Plus subscription service looks to be their idea to counter Xbox Game Pass, the so-called “Netflix for Videogames” that Microsoft launched for multiple platforms: not just their Xbox One and new Xbox Series X/S, but also Microsoft Windows 10 and XCloud on Android. Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan mentioned such a move on PlayStation Plus last 2020, so perhaps this is the plan, close to launch. Perhaps more information will be shared by Sony Interactive soon, now that the internet is in the know too.

Image courtesy of Game Rant

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