This, of course, is a great thing for players, with major game releases available on more platforms. But it’s also part of a slow and steady shift for the platform holders, which once heavily relied on exclusives as a means to move hardware. That’s still largely the case for Nintendo – don’t expect to see Mario Kart World anywhere but the Switch 2 – but Microsoft and Sony have been steadily pushing in another direction.
While Sony has yet to release a first-party game on a rival console, it has made the PC a major part of its current strategy, with notable releases like Spider-Man 2 and soon The Last of Us Part II launching on PC after their PlayStation debuts. Part of the goal, according to Sony, is to use these PC games to eventually lure players back to their console.
Microsoft’s strategy has similarly been gradual, but more expansive. It started with four smaller titles, including Grounded and Hi-Fi Rush, last February, and covered both the PS5 and Nintendo Switch. And at the time Xbox chief Phil Spencer told The Verge that “I don’t want to create a false expectation on those other platforms that this is somehow the first four to get over the dam and then the dam’s going to open and that everything else is coming, that’s not the plan today. I also don’t want to mislead customers on those other platforms.”
Well, the dam seems to have burst. Major Xbox releases like Age of Empires and Indiana Jones have made their way to the PS5, while upcoming games like Doom, Gears, and The Outer Worlds 2 are also launching on Sony’s console. Not every first-party Xbox game has been announced for the PS5 – Avowed and South of Midnight are still Xbox exclusives, for now, as is Starfield – but many of the heavy hitters have, including the likes of Gears, which has long been heavily associated with the Xbox brand.
It seems pretty clear that Microsoft is still in something of an experimentation phase, seeing how different kinds of games perform on different platforms. And as selling increasingly expensive hardware becomes less of a focus for the publisher, the success of those games will be key. Last year, when this initiative was still getting started, Spencer said that the long-term goal was “a future where every screen is an Xbox.” Based on the current sales charts, it seems that now includes a PlayStation.
