The End of the Console Wars? What Halo Coming to PS5 Really Means for Gamers
What does one do if everything is an Xbox?
Last Friday, at the Halo World Championship, Microsoft and 343 Industries revealed to us Halo: Campaign Evolved, a game available to play next year and being developed as “a faithful but modernised remake” of the campaign mode in the 2001 classic Halo: Combat Evolved.
While news of the remake received much fanfare from fans of the franchise, what caught most people by surprise was the announcement that the game was coming to “PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.” The surprise was twofold as this was not only the first entry of the iconic FPS franchise on the PlayStation but also a game most likely arriving to the PS5 on the same day as the Xbox consoles.
Was this the end of the two-decade-long console wars between PlayStation and Xbox, and with the arrival of Master Chief on PlayStation, was the once unthinkable suddenly not only plausible but a reality? Could one really just buy a single console and enjoy the best of both worlds?
Most people who have followed Microsoft’s recent staggered and at times inconsistent strategy for games must have been unsurprised by the Halo announcement, as it aligned with Xbox president Sarah Bond’s interview from earlier in the week with Mashable’s Timothy Beck Werth, where she called the idea of exclusive first-party titles “antiquated.”
A view that seems almost logical from Microsoft’s perspective, considering that one has to look as far as June this year, when Microsoft’s other iconic franchise, Forza, was made available on the PS5 with Horizon V.
If we were to consider that other exclusives like Sea of Thieves have been available on Sony’s console from as early as April 2024, it almost seems like a longer process in the works where each title was made available carefully and player response carefully assessed.
However, despite the reasoning behind Microsoft’s unconventional approach, it is essential to examine the strange predicament the Xbox division finds itself in.
For starters, through its many acquisitions between 2020 and 2023, it emerged as one of the largest game publishers in the world, with a portfolio that includes Call of Duty, Doom, Forza, The Outer Worlds, and Fable. Add to that the ongoing struggles in selling Xbox hardware, and Microsoft suddenly found itself holding game franchises worth billions that needed to be played by millions at least worldwide to justify the cost of their development.
In the middle of a console generation where it was losing, Microsoft found it increasingly difficult to enforce platform exclusivity on franchises that had historically been third-party (like Call of Duty or Doom), forcing it to continue with existing revenue models and platform deals already in place from the studios it had acquired.
Struggles with consistency in strategy:
Despite the struggles with Xbox hardware, the biggest challenge Microsoft faces lies in the many mixed messages the company has sent out in recent months.
For starters, there’s the “everything is an Xbox” approach, where Microsoft hopes that by bringing players into the Game Pass ecosystem, they will play its games on every possible gaming device. Then, there are this month’s new handhelds, intended to signal a fresh approach to play.
But this is where the inconsistencies begin: there’s talk of next-gen consoles that promise an undiluted Xbox experience and are expected to perform like high-end gaming PCs, premium offerings in every sense. At the same time, the recent price hikes for Game Pass tiers and existing consoles have players questioning the value of their gaming hobby. And finally, with most Xbox exclusives now arriving on Sony platforms, many are left wondering: why remain invested in Microsoft’s hardware or ecosystem at all?
To put it simply, in a month where Sony’s Ghost of Yotei and Nintendo’sPokémon Legends Z-A are raking in big money for their consoles, Microsoft is unable to justify why the upcoming Call of Duty or Outer Worlds II need to be played on its devices.
