Shadow Warrior 3 to be free PlayStation Now title in Game Pass style deal
metro.co.ukSony has made a first, tentative step towards countering Game Pass, by making upcoming indie title Shadow Warrior 3 free on its streaming service.
If the rumours are correct Sony is likely to announce its equivalent to Xbox Game Pass sometime this year, possibly during a State of Play livestream in March.
It won’t be exactly the same as Game Pass, since it’s unlikely to make first party games free at launch, but it will likely offer lower profile third party games, and that’s exactly what’s happening with the upcoming Shadow Warrior 3 and PlayStation Now.
The game is being released on Xbox and PC on March 1, but on PlayStation Now it will be free to play next month, at no extra cost.
The rumours suggest that the PlayStation Game Pass will combine PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now into a new three tier subscription service, so it’s very easy to see the deal with Shadow Warrior 3 as a test run.
The news was announced on the PlayStation Blog, alongside a new 10 minute gameplay video. Naturally, it didn’t mention anything about any Game Pass equivalents though.
The modern Shadow Warrior trilogy is a reboot of the original 1997 first person game, which used the original Duke Nukem 3D engine and had many advanced features for the time, including turrets and driveable vehicles.
The original was never a major hit though and the new games have also only been minor successes, so making Shadow Warrior 3 a free PlayStation Now title is unlikely to be a particularly expensive experiment for Sony.
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