2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn marked an inflection point for the PlayStation 4. The console went from being a great machine for indie games and third-party blockbusters to being synonymous with top-notch first-party exclusives. Spider-Man and God of War arrived the following year. The avalanche continued up until the moment the PS5 arrived. But the momentum didn’t last.
Sony was generous with sequels early in the current console cycle, but now, over four years in, the PS5 is a success story not because of the first-party PlayStation Studios hit machine but seemingly in spite of it. Astro Bot and Helldivers 2 (published by Sony but made by an outside studio) feel like the exceptions that prove the rule. New console-defining IPs have yet to arrive (maybe Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet?) and the live-service money pit Sony went all in on has accomplished little while tying up some teams for years.
Anchored by both Death Stranding 2 and Ghost of Yotei, it would be farfetched to call 2025 a bad year for PlayStation games, but it’s certainly still feeling like a lighter one overall for the platform. Despite big third-party releases like Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin’s Creed Shadows early in the year, the second half feels lighter than it should for where we’re at in the PS5’s lifecycle. Momentum should be building back up to another end-of-the-generation crescendo as developers squeeze every last optimization out of the hardware. It still feels like we’re waiting for the cavalry to arrive.
Enter Xbox. A steady stream of multiplatform releases and ports of prior exclusives is currently doing some very heavy lifting on PS5. Over half of the top 10 bestselling games on the console in the last quarter were from Microsoft, according to a new chart shared this week by Circana director of game research Mat Piscatella. Forza Horizon 5 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered were numbers two and three, while Doom: The Dark Ages and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle held down the sixth and eight spots, respectively. (Perennial chart-toppers Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Minecraft also put in work.)
Xbox games will continue bolstering the PS5’s lineup throughout the year. Gears of War: Reloaded brings the franchise to PlayStation for the first time next month alongside Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, with The Outer Worlds 2 providing a big sci-fi RPG shooter for the fall. There’s also the Microsoft-published Ninja Gaiden 4, and any other fall releases the company hasn’t gotten around to announcing yet. How long before the rumored Starfield port arrives as well? And is there a version of Halo that comes to PS5 sooner than an upcoming remake of Halo: Combat Evolved?
No modern console is singularly defined by its first-party exclusives anymore (unless you’re Nintendo), but at a time when PlayStation Studios has temporarily stalled, long-time rival Xbox has turned out to be an unexpectedly fortuitous pillar helping to hold up the PS5 as it nears its twilight years. It’s all thanks to a multiplatform strategy that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. If Microsoft had kept all of its recently acquired toys exclusive, as seemed increasingly likely as recently as 2023, this year might have felt like an especially dire one for PS5 players. Instead, Microsoft’s expensive new mega-publishing apparatus has helped the console recover from a series of self-inflicted fumbles.
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