IGN recently posted a comment on the login of "Forza Horizon 5" on PS5.

The full text is as follows:

Many Xbox players have been curious whether the Xbox "three" series of games - Halo, Gears of War or Forza - will eventually land on PS5.The result is Forza Horizon 5 taking this step first, and the official has announced that the game will be available to Sony's next-generation console in spring 2025.As expected, players have different opinions on this matter since the announcement.

Porting such a precious Xbox exclusive game to competitors' consoles even broke some players' hearts.But to be honest, we had expected such a day.If you think about it carefully, Phil Spencer and the Xbox team have inadvertently tried to convey to us that the principle of "no red line" is now implemented in exclusive games, which is likely to mean Halo, Gears of War, and StarsAnd many other Xbox series games will sooner or later be available to PS5 and may even be available to Nintendo Switch 2.

But why do you do this? Why risk alienating loyal players who are fond of the Xbox brand for exclusive gaming? The answer is almost certainly data.Time and again, we see that Microsoft's hardware revenue is falling, while Xbox content and services revenue is increasing.No wonder the company's focus has shifted.This strategy shift means Xbox can focus more on becoming a publishing giant while allowing its games to reach more players across all platforms.

Earlier this year, Spencer talked about Xbox having “evolved” its positioning in order to continue to thrive during a period of challenges facing the industry.In addition, he believes that Xbox's new strategy is best for the public to accept, which will allow large developers and publishers to continue to make high-budget 3A games.Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler recently agreed with this view, noting that due to rising costs of game development, the industry can only grow by reducing its dependence on exclusive games.

Of course, if those former Xbox exclusive games really sell considerable, it will be even more of a driving force.In February 2024, Xbox announced that Perfect Sound Wave, Sea of ​​Thieves, Pentiment and Lockdown will be available on other platforms. We soon discovered that PlayStation and Nintendo players are very good at these games they could not play before.interested.Especially "Sea of ​​Thieves", which has achieved great success on PS5, and Microsoft has not shyly emphasized this fact.That being said, there were also criticisms at the time that there were only four games for porting, and when PlayStation players started pouring into these games in large numbers, it was obviously not the case.

This is my biggest question about Xbox’s new strategy at the moment.Xbox launched a massive marketing campaign claiming that every device is "Xbox", and now everyone seems to understand this philosophy.However, Xbox never really explained the specific situation of the game logging on to PS5 and Switch.There were four games in the beginning, and a few more, and it could (well, probably) be the entire Xbox library.Aside from rumors and occasional hints from Phil Spencer, Xbox players still don’t really have a clear idea of ​​what they can expect.

Forza Horizon 5 is available on PS5, which may feel like the beginning of a new era or even the beginning of the end for some Xbox players, but in fact it is just an evolution of a strategy that has been implemented for some time.——A strategy that is expected to bring huge profits in 2025.Multi-platform promotion is in full swing. Although Microsoft obviously doesn't want to plan too much for us, we will definitely see more Xbox first-party games landing on PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 and other platforms by the end of this year.This will be a good thing from a business and industry perspective, but it will obviously be sad for those who want Xbox to retain gaming exclusivity.

And it is also impossible to predict what the long-term outcome of this strategy will be.What happens when the next generation of Xbox consoles is launched? What happens to Xbox handheld consoles? Can Microsoft successfully sell hardware without large-scale exclusive games as a selling point? Can the Xbox Game Pass drive enough device sales alone?No doubt Phil Spencer has thought about these and more, and hopefully he has answered it.But at present, the entire Xbox community is filled with an uneasy feeling. In the future, Xbox must work harder than before to retain loyal players.I just hope this works enough because Xbox is undergoing permanent changes.