TL;DR: Microsoft’s $70 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard has led to financial pressures, prompting Xbox to consider releasing more first-party games on competing platforms like PS5. Rising costs and the need to meet revenue targets are driving this shift. Xbox’s strategy has already seen success with games like Sea of Thieves and Grounded.

Microsoft paid $70 billion for Activision-Blizzard, and now team Xbox is stressed to hit challenging internal targets…soon the company could have “no choice” but to bring more of its first-party franchises over to competing platforms.

Microsoft may have 'no choice' but to bring Xbox games to PS5, analyst says 13

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Xbox exclusivity is going the way of the dodo. Once heralded as a way to sell consoles, first-party exclusives have lost their importance when weighed against the almighty profit margin. Now that the dust has settled from the Activision merger, the service giant delivered $7.4 billion in revenue in its first year, comprising 32% of full-year Xbox revenues. But costs are rising across the board and Microsoft is even losing money on Xbox console hardware.

Selling games has become more important than ever. Xbox needs to rake in as much revenue as it can in order to meet the strict revenue/profit margin target set by higher-ups. Bringing games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to PS5 should help with ancillary PS Store sales over time, and this effect could be utilized for many more games. The move has done wonders for Microsoft; shortly after breaking exclusivity with Sea of Thieves and Grounded, in combination of the success of the Fallout TV show helped Microsoft achieve and interesting sales milestone. For a period, Microsoft had more best-selling games on Sony’s own first-party PlayStation Store than Sony did.

Kantan Games CEO Dr. Serkan Toto believes the combined pressures from Microsoft’s board and the current state of the games industry could push Xbox to dive headlong into multi-platform releases.

In a recent interview with Games Industry.biz, Toto said:

Xbox will open all floodgates and go all-in on PS5 – “I am aware that Microsoft has already become somewhat open to releasing Xbox games on other platforms, but 2025 might be the year where they go all-in.

“The $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal, rising costs across the board, the power of forever-titles, the huge lead of Sony and other factors will likely leave Microsoft no choice but to bring all their big games to PS5 early, including blockbusters such as Gears of War: E-Day or Perfect Dark.”

At The Game Awards 2024, Microsoft confirmed that another first-party game, Obsidian’s upcoming The Outer Worlds 2, would launch on PlayStation 5 as well as Xbox and PC.



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