While Microsoft might be quite far behind Sony when it comes to console sales when you compare the Xbox Series X/S to the PS5, the company has been doing quite well by porting its games to PlayStation. As caught by Circana analyst Mat Piscatela, quite a few of the best-selling games on PS5 for the period between April 6 and July 5 in the US have been Microsoft’s outings.
According to Piscatella, Forza Horizon 5 has been the top-selling game on PS5 in this last quarter, followed by The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered in second place. Fifth place has been taken up by DOOM: The Dark Ages, with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle right behind it in sixth place. It is also worth noting that a couple of other spots have also been taken up by games that fall under Microsoft’s banner, namely Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in fourth place, and Minecraft in seventh place. This makes six out of the ten best-selling PS5 games in the US for the period Microsoft’s titles.
While these sales figures for Xbox games on PS5 undoubtedly have to do with the fact that there has been an audience for those titles waiting for them to come to their console of choice, the fact that Sony hasn’t released major titles in the same period might have also contributed quite a bit to this.
For context, Sony has only released one major new game in the period – Death Stranding 2: On the Beach – which might have sold quite a bit, but hit store shelves right as the period was ending. The last major release by the company was MLB The Show 25 back in March. The lack of many first-party releases in the period likely ended up contributing to players getting excited to jump on new games on their platform of choice courtesy of Microsoft.
Earlier this month, Piscatella had also noted that he expects Microsoft to make more announcements about its titles coming to PlayStation soon. This, according to Piscatella, is thanks to the success seen by the PS5 release of games like Forza Horizon 5, and the market changing to the point where players are less willing to leave their console of choice behind in favour of a new platform.
“We’ve been seeing this now for about a year or so,” Piscatella said. “Every month you’re seeing a game pop up that’s been gone for a while. And you’re like, how did that happen? Well it came out on another platform.”
“People who buy a hardware system these days, they’re doing it because of the ecosystem, because of their friends list,” he continued. “You’re not going to get people to transition consoles because of exclusives anymore. We’re way beyond that point.”
“People are entrenched into their systems. And bringing the content to them is the only way to win. And that is what everyone is doing, except for Nintendo they tend to do their own thing. Even they could benefit from it, but of course they won’t, that’s not their MO.”
In the meantime, check out our review of Forza Horizon 5’s PS5 debut.
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