Google to Launch Play Pass as a Rival to Apple Arcade

During Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference this year, the company announced Apple Arcade. Apple Arcade is a monthly subscription service that gives you access to over a hundred mobile games for a flat fee. Of course, you can play these games on your iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. This is great because users can pick up where they left off during a game, even if they have to switch devices. What you might not have known is that Google is working on a similar service called Play Pass. Streaming Services are definitely the way of the future, so Google getting in on the action also makes a lot of sense.

Information about this service was leaked earlier in the year, but there weren’t a lot of details at the time. Now, Google is in the final stages of testing. So what does this service look like?

Much like Apple Arcade, Play Pass will give users access to a curated catalog which includes games as well as music. It will also provide you with access to hundreds of premium apps and games without ads, download fees or in-app purchases. So if you’re a big gamer, and also an Android user, then this is likely the service you want to subscribe to. But how much does it cost? Apparently, it will only cost $5/month. How can you turn down that kind of service?

What’s great about this service is that it allows you to play games that would otherwise cost you more to purchase. For example, if you wanted to purchase Risk, you would have to shell out $7.99, but with this service, you can play as part of the subscription.

This is all coming just in time for Apple’s Arcade release this fall. Especially since Apple has pulled in a ton of impressive developers including LEGO, Cartoon Network and Sega. Apple is also paying for some of the development costs and relying on exclusive titles, which doesn’t seem to be the case for Google’s Play Pass. Either way, Google is planning to counter Apple’s launch and we expect it to be released around the same time.

Whether this will pan out as a viable service for games and apps remains to be seen. We know that streaming services work for music and movies, but both of these services are new.