Following the success of Forza Horizon 5’s release on PS5 earlier this year, Xbox might be keen on bringing more of its titles to Sony’s console, as well as the Nintendo Switch 2. While Microsoft itself hasn’t made any new announcements about this, the belief that the company might bring over more of its games to other consoles comes courtesy of a report by The Game Business, along with discussions of Forza Horizon 5’s success from Circana analyst Mat Piscatella.
In the report, Circana believes that the gaming market has evolved to a point where customers won’t be swapping their main gaming console of choice for exclusive games. He believes that we’re “way beyond” that point now, and that the future for Xbox likely lies in more multiplatform releases. Bringing up the recent success of Forza Horizon 5 thanks to its PS5, Piscatella mentions that this is something we’ll see happening more and more going forward.
“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.”
The fact that many players now have access to Forza Horizon 5 than before, back when it was only available on Xbox and PC, has been a big reason for its recent success. Piscatella believes that, these days, players have already established themselves within specific console-oriented ecosystems, be it Sony’s or Microsoft’s. These ecosystems include friends lists, and even digital copies of games bought on older platforms.
“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.”
According to Piscatella, at least in the US, the market has become competitive enough, with players entrenched in their own systems, where companies will want to focus more on bringing their games to players rather than trying to entice players to come to them through console exclusives. This also comes down to the fact that, owing to the popularity of live service games like Fortnite that take up most of a player’s gaming time, non-live service titles have to compete with each other for the player’s time.
“In the US at least, the Top Ten live service games suck up half of all gaming time every month, and every other game has got to fight for the remainder,” he said. “So, bringing that content to where people are is the only way you’re going to be able to win in an environment like we’re looking at right now.
“Forza being this strong… that’s great. That really bodes well for its next iteration, if they come out day one across systems. Every game finding its way to more stores and ecosystems… that is how you’re going to survive and win.”
For more details about Forza Horizon 5’s recent PS5 release, check out our review.
