We have interesting rumors going around about Microsoft’s brining another of their games multiplatform.
Speculation around a new Microsoft game coming to PlayStation 5 began thanks to NateDrake and Shinobi602. As reported by XboxEra, they dropped hints that more Xbox games would be announced to come to new platforms, and it’s clear that they are alluding here to PlayStation 5. The rumor is also that the game will be announced as soon as next week.
There’s a rumor going around that Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PlayStation 5. But, we have covered that rumor separately here. That’s because, as Jez Corden reported on Windows Central, the Microsoft game coming to PlayStation 5 that will be announced next week is not Forza Horizon 5.
Jez says that his sources have corroborated that next week’s PlayStation 5 title is a different game, though they haven’t told him what the game actually is. Jez put forward several hypothetical games that Microsoft may have decided to bring over, as part of their ongoing experiment with multiplatform releases.
Now, the one that may be the most obvious is Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. That title, produced by Bethesda and MachineGames, was originally announced as a multiplatform title. Apparently, Phil Spencer renegotiated the contract to make it an Xbox Series X|S exclusive. But, it is possible, given that Microsoft is now open to being a broader third party publisher, that they have changed their mind once again.
Jez then posits that the next game could be Hellblade 2. That would be an interesting choice, as the original game, Hellblade: Senua’s Saga, received glowing reviews as a multiplatform title, the Xbox Series X|S exclusive Hellblade 2 was not as well received.
If Microsoft does this, will the succeeding critical reception for the PlayStation 5 version prove that critics have an unconscious and unchecked bias for PlayStation and against Xbox? That may not be related to their plans to port the game, but it’s something that I imagine at least some people in Microsoft want to see play out, just to see if it’s true or not.
Other than those, Jez points to Xbox One games like Killer Instinct, State of Decay 2, or even Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The logic for these would seemingly simply be because they would have hypothetically made all their money on Xbox already.
If that logic holds, then perhaps Microsoft would also try to carry over Crackdown 3, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, and Recore. It’s possible that they came up with dev tools to ease making these ports, so it wouldn’t cost them to bother at all.
Personally, I see an upside to bringing over their other niche games to see if they find an audience. They could, for example, be planning to bring over Creatures of Ava, or Age of Mythology: Retold. The mainstreaming of QOL has created room for a revival of strategy games on console, and these games and their studios would see more benefits, and Microsoft feel less reputational damage, if they made these arrangements.
Really, they should bring Rare Replay to every platform already, but we don’t know for now if Microsoft will bring all or none of these games that have been speculated on so far, to PlayStation 5 or other platforms. We’ll just have to wait and see when it happens.
