[STEAM] Halo: Campaign Evolved Is the Final Nail in the Coffin for the Xbox Exclusive — but in Truth the PS5 Version Comes as No Surprise

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Halo, once the flagship Xbox exclusive, the video game

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launched its first console with, has finally jumped ship.

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has announced Halo: Campaign Evolved — a remake of the original game’s campaign — and it’s coming to PlayStation 5 day one.

The Unreal Engine 5 remake of the Bungie-developed 2001 campaign is set for launch in 2026 on PC, Xbox Series X and S, and, crucially, PS5. It is the first new Halo game since 2021’s Halo Infinite, and the first Halo ever to release on a PlayStation console.

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, including first info on the new three-mission prequel story arc. And yes, if you were wondering, there’s crossplay, which means Xbox, PC, and PlayStation owners can play Halo co-op together for the first time.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is the final nail in the coffin for the Xbox exclusive, then, although in truth the shooter series’ release on PlayStation does not come as any surprise. Xbox Game Studios is already one of the most prolific and successful publishers on PlayStation, and just this week

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so

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’s thinking on this is crystal clear.

But what has prompted

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’s multiplatform push? A recent

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report alleged that

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is pushing Xbox studios to deliver a 30% margin — much higher than the industry average — and one of the ways studios can help bring in more money is by releasing their games on rival platforms, such as PlayStation and Nintendo Switch as well as PC.

One prominent critic of the exclusive is former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America Shawn Layden, who

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“It reduces your addressable market,” Layden told

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, before citing the success of Arrowhead’s

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, which launched on PlayStation 5 and PC to explosive success. “Particularly when you’re in the world of live service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, getting more people in. In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% of those people will never spend a nickel. The business is all about conversion. You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open. Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in.”

Layden said single-player games have a similar audience consideration as multiplayer games, though not exactly the same. “For single-player games it’s not the same exigency,” he said. “But if you’re spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if it’s just 10% more.”

Layden’s comments echo those of former Xbox boss Peter Moore, who in

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suggested

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will be debating internally whether to release Xbox poster-child Halo on PlayStation.

“If

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says, wait, we're doing $250 million on our own platforms, but if we then took Halo as, let's call it a third-party, we could do a billion… You got to think long and hard about that, right?” Moore said. “I mean, you just got to go, yeah, should it be kept? It's a piece of intellectual property. It's ******* than just a game. And how do you leverage that? Those are the conversations that always happen with, how do you leverage it in everything that we would do?”

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’s stance on exclusives has become one of the biggest talking points in the Xbox community, and that conversation will only grow louder now we know Halo has gone to PlayStation.

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’s approach is in stark contrast to Nintendo and Sony’s. Nintendo has the most hardline policy on its games, releasing them on its consoles only. Sony has softened its approach in recent years, releasing the bulk of its games on PC after PlayStation (and in the case of Helldivers 2, eventually on Xbox). But Sony still refuses to launch its big single-player games on anything other than PlayStation day one (the latest example of this is Sucker Punch's Ghost of Yotei).

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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on

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at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

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