Halo coming to PlayStation is one of those events that, five years ago, would have been the tell that “something is not right here” in a show about time travel or alternate universes. Looking at the state of Xbox with its layoffs, game cancellations, price hikes, studio closures, and a soft release schedule light on attention-grabbing titles, it certainly seems like all is not well. But the company’s focus on tearing down the walls of its garden by multi-platforming its biggest exclusives combined with a push to make Xbox games playable on just about anything, denotes a strategy that may be what keeps the green guys in the game for a while longer.
Xbox has been offering exclusives to its competitor’s platforms since last year. The company tested the waters with smaller titles like Grounded and Pentiment on the Switch and Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves on the PS5 before graduating to bigger, buzzier hits like Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, and Gears of War. Halo, the crown jewel of Xbox exclusives, is merely the apotheosis of this multi-platform strategy.
In May, Sony reported that Indiana Jones, The Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion Remastered, and Forza Horizon 5 were among the top downloaded games on the PS5. And while they’re not exclusives, other Xbox published games including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Minecraft were also on the list. “The biggest games in the world are available everywhere,” said Xbox president Sarah Bond in an interview with Mashable. “The idea of locking [games] to one store or one device is antiquated for most people.” Xbox games have enjoyed more success simply by being available to more people. That openness is supported by the “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which aims to bring Xbox content beyond the console itself.
Image: Microsoft
Xbox console sales have always lagged behind PlayStation and Nintendo and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions are slowing down. The Trump administration’s tariff policy has forced all three console makers to raise their prices in contravention of the tradition of consoles getting cheaper as they age. Consumers are increasingly faced with the choice of necessity over luxury.
Xbox’s Play Anywhere and Cloud streaming attempt to get around that choice by taking advantage of devices consumers already have. “We are all seeking to meet people where they are,” said Matt Booty, president of Xbox game content and studios, in an interview with the New York Times. And for the diehard fans who are still interested in having dedicated hardware, Xbox plans to have something for them too. “The next-gen console is going to be a very premium, very high-end curated experience,” said Bond in her Mashable interview. Xbox has already debuted its pricey new ROG Ally and Ally X handhelds, and Bond’s comments suggest that the next console will be pricey and powerful.
But Xbox’s new strategy isn’t enough to save it completely if it can’t navigate the problems currently dragging it down. It shuttered a number of studios in the last two years including Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks. The company has cancelled its Perfect Dark and Everwild projects. Fable, originally scheduled for a 2025 release, has been delayed to 2026 while multiple rounds of layoffs at Microsoft continue to gut its studios.
“We are all seeking to meet people where they are.”
It’s been six years since Bethesda announced Elder Scrolls VI with no word on when more information would be coming. The Fallout franchise is experiencing a soft renaissance thanks to the Amazon show but is missing something new for playersy other than updates to existing games and a nod from Todd Howard that Fallout 5 it’s still coming eventually. And while folks are excited that the original Halo is getting an enhanced version for PS5, the latest entry, Halo Infinite, was a critical failure. Being where the people are no matter if that’s on a PlayStation or a mobile device seems to be a winning strategy, but none of that matters if they have nothing good to play.
Image: Halo Studios
It doesn’t help that Xbox also has an image problem right now. A report in Bloomberg revealed that an unusually high target profit margin of 30 percent has led to unpopular price increases in Xbox Game Pass and studio closures. Its new ASUS ROG Ally / ROG Ally X handhelds are priced at an eye-watering $600 / $1000 respectively for what seems to be a work-in-progress device. In a town hall meeting last year, Matt Booty said Xbox needs, “smaller games that give us prestige and awards,” the very day after it closed the studio responsible for the short, popular, award-winning Hi-Fi Rush. Parent company Microsoft has been a target of the BDS movement, and has fired a number of employees for speaking out against the company’s business contracts with the Israeli government and accusing it of “using AI for genocide.” And earlier this week, when the Department of Homeland Security used Halo in a racist ICE recruitment ad on social media, Microsoft declined to comment.
Halo coming to PlayStation isn’t the death of Xbox, but instead the clearest indication yet of the company’s shift in priorities. The console wars have long been over and console makers have to contend with a new reality where their biggest competitors aren’t only each other but also other attention and time-consuming platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Fortnite, and Roblox. Xbox can’t do that if its best offerings are siloed on the smallest install base of the three big consoles. And while it feels weird to see Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 someplace other than a Microsoft device, these moves are necessary to ensure the future of Xbox, whatever that ends up looking like.
