In the last year,Xboxhas undergone some remarkable changes. The protracted rivalry with PlayStation that underpinned a decade-and-a-half of console exclusives appears to be coming to an end, as Xbox is now actively porting games to PlayStation 5.
It began with Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment and Sea of Thieves, and continued with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Oblivion Remastered, and Forza Horizon 5. The latter is actually PlayStation 5’s best-selling game of 2025 so far, an event I didn’t anticipate happening so soon after Microsoft’s absurdly expensive acquisition of Activision-Blizzard in 2022.
Xbox has yet to release anything on the Nintendo Switch 2, but reports have all but confirmed that ports are planned in the near future. Pentiment was released on the original Switch last year, meaning it’s also available on the Switch 2.
A Favourable Breeze
According to a recent report fromThe Game Business, Xbox is preparing to announce more PlayStation 5 ports “in the coming weeks.” There are no specifics as to which games will be arriving on PlayStation, but we can speculate on some of the likely candidates.
Avowed and South of Midnight are two games already rumoured to be getting PlayStation 5 ports, making them likely subjects of any upcoming port announcements. There’s also Starfield, Microsoft Flight Simulator and Age of Empires 4 to consider.
A more consequential possibility could be Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Master Chief was, if not still is, the poster boy of the Xbox brand, and Chief appearing on the PlayStation would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.
We’ve already seen Xbox’s willingness to port its strongest IPs, as Gears of War Reloaded is set to release on PlayStation 5 in August.
There’s also the Rare Replay, a compilation of 30 classic Rare (and predecessor Ultimate Play The Game) games that originally released on Xbox One.
As for Switch 2 ports, considerations about the console’s capabilities need to be made. Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves seem to be likely candidates. Some of Xbox’s back catalogue, such as Halo and Gears of War, could certainly run on the Nintendo Switch 2 if Xbox wanted to go down this route with the console.
It’s likely that, in time, most of Xbox’s first-party catalogue will appear on consoles that were once considered fierce rivals.
