Hot on the heels of the leaked Hi-Fi Rush cross-platform cosmetics, there’s further reports and rumours that Microsoft are planning to bring more Xbox exclusive games to PlayStation 5 in the coming months and years, including Starfield, the upcoming Indiana Jones game, Halo and more.
Per reporting by XboxEra, Microsoft are planning to launch Starfield on PS5 sometime after the Shattered Space expansion is released on Xbox and PC – expected to arrive later this year. As part of this effort, Microsoft has invested in additional PS5 dev kits to support ongoing development units, beyond those that would have come to the company through the Bethesda and Activision Blizzard acquisitions.
Further to that, The Verge is also reporting that Microsoft is now considering bringing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to PlayStation 5 after the initial Xbox and PC release. This after all the hullabaloo of the original agreement with Disney having to be rewritten to allow them to publish it exclusively on Xbox – as revealed during the Activision Blizzard acquisition court cases – though this would theoretically still be a timed exclusive.
And if you thought this was all just going to be Bethesda’s games becoming timed exclusives, then you could be wrong. All of these are fresh rumours coming after a leak/report/rumour posted on Discord in January that Microsoft would be effectively going fully cross-platform, all the way down to Halo appearing on PlayStation consoles.
All of this would be utterly seismic for the games industry as a whole. Microsoft just through a ludicrous $68.7 billion at Activision Blizzard to acquire Call of Duty, Diablo, Candy Crush and more, and was dragged through the courts to give assurance after assurance that they would keep this company’s work cross-platform and sign away cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft.
That in and of itself came after several years of mass acquisitions, from independent studios like Ninja Theory through to ZeniMax and Bethesda, and angering gamers with decisions to make Starfield an Xbox exclusive.
If Microsoft makes all of these games truly cross-platform, whether that’s through timed exclusives or day and date releases, it will be the death knell for Xbox as a console family. The company is already finding it completely impossible to keep up with Sony in terms of market share, and without even console exclusives to hang their hat on, what would be the point of buying their machines? Will they be trying to accelerate the push toward the still minuscule game streaming market?
The simple fact might be that, despite still being a profitable business even without Activision Blizzard’s influx of revenue, Microsoft is noticing that hugely expensive games like Starfield and Halo Infinite aren’t making the returns they hope and expect. If that’s the case, then cross-platform to reach more gamers again might be the answer that high-end execs have settled on.
coruscant
I really do hope so, because I’m loathe to play shooters on PC, but will have to if Indiana Jones doesn’t release on Playstation. If they do, I will finally have to get a PS5!
Stefan L
Out of curiosity, what’s wrong with shooters on PC?
Tuffcub
I did point out that during the recent Xbox Direct thing not a single game had an “Xbox Exclusive” stamp on it. MS used to do that, massive “XBOX ONLY!” splash screens in trailers so there absence was conspicuous.
Nate
Competition is healthy, as much of a Playstation fanboy that I am, I would be concerned to see what happens if they aren’t being driven to innovate.