Halo: Campaign Evolved Is the Final Nail in the Coffin for the Xbox Exclusive but in Truth the PS5 Version Comes as No Surprise
Halo, once the flagship Xbox exclusive, the video game Microsoft launched its first console with, has finally jumped ship. Microsoft has announced Halo: Campaign Evolved a remake of the original games campaign and its coming to PlayStation 5 day one.The Unreal Engine 5 remake of the Bungie-developed 2001 campaign is set for launch in 2026 on PC, Xbox Series X and S, and, crucially, PS5. It is the first new Halo game since 2021s Halo Infinite, and the first Halo ever to release on a PlayStation console. IGN has played Halo: Campaign Evolved and has all the details right here, including first info on the new three-mission prequel story arc. And yes, if you were wondering, theres crossplay, which means Xbox, PC, and PlayStation owners can play Halo co-op together for the first time.Halo: Campaign Evolved is the final nail in the coffin for the Xbox exclusive, then, although in truth the shooter series release on PlayStation does not come as any surprise. Xbox Game Studios is already one of the most prolific and successful publishers on PlayStation, and just this week Xbox president Sarah Bond called the idea of exclusive games antiquated, so Microsofts thinking on this is crystal clear.But what has prompted Microsofts multiplatform push? A recent Bloomberg report alleged that Microsoft is pushing Xbox studios to deliver a 30% margin much higher than the industry average and one of the ways studios can help bring in more money is by releasing their games on rival platforms, such as PlayStation and Nintendo Switch as well as PC.One prominent critic of the exclusive is former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden, who last year said that when a video games costs exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles heel.It reduces your addressable market, Layden told GamesBeat, before citing the success of Arrowheads Helldivers 2, which launched on PlayStation 5 and PC to explosive success. Particularly when youre in the world of live service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, getting more people in. In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% of those people will never spend a nickel. The business is all about conversion. You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open. Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in.Layden said single-player games have a similar audience consideration as multiplayer games, though not exactly the same. For single-player games its not the same exigency, he said. But if youre spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if its just 10% more.Laydens comments echo those of former Xbox boss Peter Moore, who in a recent interview with IGN suggested Microsoft will be debating internally whether to release Xbox poster-child Halo on PlayStation.If Microsoft says, wait, we're doing $250 million on our own platforms, but if we then took Halo as, let's call it a third-party, we could do a billion You got to think long and hard about that, right? Moore said. I mean, you just got to go, yeah, should it be kept? It's a piece of intellectual property. It's bigger than just a game. And how do you leverage that? Those are the conversations that always happen with, how do you leverage it in everything that we would do?Microsofts stance on exclusives has become one of the biggest talking points in the Xbox community, and that conversation will only grow louder now we know Halo has made the jump to PlayStation. Microsofts approach is in stark contrast to Nintendo and Sonys. Nintendo has the most hardline policy on its games, releasing them on its consoles only. Sony has softened its approach in recent years, releasing its multiplayer, live service games on PC at the same time as PlayStation (and in the case of Helldivers 2, eventually on Xbox). But Sony still refuses to launch its big single-player games on anything other than PlayStation day one (the latest example of this is Sucker Punch's Ghost of Yotei).Now Campaign Evolved is confirmed for PS5, there is no going back for Halo. Indeed, it seems Halo is from this day forward as much a PlayStation game as it is an Xbox game. Speaking tonight on a panel at the Halo World Championships 2025, Halo Community Director, Brian Jarrard, teased: "It's really a new era. Halo is on PlayStation going forward, starting with Halo: Campaign Evolved."Be sure to check out everything announced at Halo Studios Halo: Campaign Evolved panel for more.Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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