It's probably fair to say that while some have welcomed Xbox's new multi-platform approach, a significant portion of gamers, mainly those who bought the Xbox console for its exclusives, aren't happy with its games finding their way to the PS5. The developers themselves, however, could not be happier.
That's according to Jason Schreier. Insider was a guest on 404 Media last week, where he revealed that developers working at Xbox Studios are over the moon about putting their games on PlayStation. “A lot of game studios are now really excited that they get to release their games on PlayStation… unlike in the past, where they were really publishing games on their own platforms, Xbox and PC.” Schreier said.
Xbox Devs are more than happy to leave the feature behind
Xbox tested the multi-platform waters in 2024 when it ported Hi-Fi Rush, Sea of Thieves, Pentiment, and Grounded to PS5. Apparently, some or all of those games performed well on Xbox's rival platform, as such, after successive teases that anything exclusive to Xbox might qualify for the PlayStation port treatment, now anything and everything Xbox publishes will be available on PS5. In most cases those games appear on the day they become available on Xbox.
Certain dominoes needed to fall to confirm that Xbox exclusives are a thing of the past, and now that Halo is coming to PS5, all of those dominoes are down. Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the original game, will be released on the same day on both Xbox Series X|S and PS5. Halo Studios has already confirmed that future Halo projects will be released on PlayStation beyond Campaign Evolved.
Xbox president says exclusive games are “antiquated” because everyone is playing Fortnite
Xbox seems to think that people have evolved “way past” the idea of exclusives.
Why are Xbox studios so excited about porting their games to PS5?
There are a few reasons why developers at Xbox Studios are happy about the games available on PS5. The most obvious reasons are that more people will play their games, and that means those games will make more money. Despite being available on Xbox for years, Forza Horizon 5 went straight to the top of the PS5 charts when its port launched on PlayStation earlier this year, and it stayed there for a long time.
There is also a 30 percent Microsoft profit margin to consider all this, too. Microsoft expects the Xbox, and therefore everything connected to the Xbox, including its studios and the games they make, to generate a 30 percent profit. That's a significant increase over what's been expected from Xbox in the past. The ability to release games on the PS5, and therefore sell to a wider audience and make more money without having to spend a lot to make that happen, will help relieve some of the pressure on the Xbox devs.
Simply put, outside of timed exclusives like Forza Horizon 6, Xbox exclusives are a thing of the past, and everyone at Xbox seems to be pretty happy with how it's going so far. 2026 will be one of the biggest years in Xbix history for tentpole first-party releases, and all of them will be released either immediately on PS5 or shortly after on Xbox.
- brand
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Microsoft
- Original release date
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November 10, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$499
- operating system
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Proprietary (Windows based)
- processor
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Custom AMD 8-core Zen 2 3.8 GHz
- resolve
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720p – 4K UHD
