Between Fable, Forza Horizon 6, Halo: Campaign Evolved and Kiln, it’s looking like a strong year not just for Xbox players but those on PS5 as well. Continuing its efforts to bring first-party titles to other platforms, three out of four will be available on day one for PlayStation. Of course, Playground Games’ open-world racer is the biggest discrepancy, launching this May for Xbox and PC before coming to PS5 later this year.
Obviously, there’s some confusion on why this is the case, as GamesRadar+ posed to Xbox Game Studios head Craig Duncan. While acknowledging this as “totally fair feedback,” he said it ultimately comes down to “how big a team is, and what plans we have at the start of development.”
“There’s always development realities about when these projects start – how big a team is, and what plans we have at the start of development. Like you said, when a strategy changes, maybe you’ve got a plan that exists with a game, and maybe you can adopt that, maybe you can’t. So that’s why. And to be clear, this is totally fair feedback. Sometimes we are inconsistent. You see some games in one place, some games in multiple places. Just know that we’re going to work on that, and we’re going to try and be more consistent with what we do.
“But you know, for our game makers, if you’re on the Fable team, you just want as many people who love Fable to appreciate the great work that the team’s doing. That’s always our goal. It’s rarely more complicated than that. It’s like, how can we get this game to as many players as we can?”
It’s worth mentioning that Turn 10 Studios is handling the PS5 version. The decision to release it for other platforms may have arrived late, whereas with Fable, it may have been slated to release on multiple platforms much earlier. Either way, Microsoft is keeping the option to release on other consoles open, though Duncan isn’t keen on anything inferior.
“My number one job is to help our teams be successful. If I think about my role, some of that is optionality about what we do and what we approach. You used the word ‘port’ before, and not to sort of pick you up on that word specifically, but wherever our games show up, we want them to show up and be the best that they can be for that platform. So we want to take advantage of whatever features and nuances that the platform has.
“So that may lead to a bit of optionality. Which is to say, if we’re only in a position to release a game on a platform and not have it show up really well? Then I think we wouldn’t do that. I think we would have a conversation internally and go, ‘Hey, unless we can do it really well and do the right thing by those players, then…’ and that’s when you get into conversations of, well, maybe we can ship it afterwards.
“Because teams are only a set size. We only have a certain amount of… ultimately, it all comes down to resources. Not everything is limitless. So we just want to do the best job, by each platform, by each game. So in that world, sometimes we’ll maintain optionality. Some games we might go PC first, others we might go console first.” He provided the example of Grounded 2, which launched for PC and Xbox Series X/S via early access via Game Preview and Steam.
While the original made its way to PS4, PS5, and Switch, that doesn’t mean the sequel was guaranteed to follow. Maybe in time for 1.0? Stay tuned for updates on that front, and in the meantime, check out Avowed, which launches this February for PS5 alongside its Anniversary Patch.
