Xbox has fully capitulated to PlayStation.
Halo itself will appear on PlayStation consoles this year, with Sony offering virtually zero reciprocity for its own games. In essence, PlayStation's ecosystem will have more to play than Xbox's own ecosystem — but Xbox has lots of exclusive platform-level features that helps it stay unique.
PC Xbox cross-buy with Xbox Play Anywhere, an industry-leading Xbox Cloud Gaming platform, and a(n undeniably expensive) Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription service featuring all first party games on day one, including Call of Duty.
But what if that differentiation was about to evaporate?
PlayStation dropped a bit of a bomb today, revealing that its PlayStation Portal "PS5 remote play" handheld is now capable of streaming "thousands" of PlayStation games you own from the cloud — no console required. This thoroughly beats Microsoft's own "Stream your own game" Xbox Cloud Gaming feature, which only features roughly a thousand games.
PlayStation beat Xbox on console, now it wants to beat Microsoft at cloud and PC too
While Microsoft's CEO worries about the impact of TikTok on Xbox, PlayStation is working to devour everything that makes Xbox unique — and they're doing it in a big way.
Revealed on the PlayStation Blog, the PlayStation Portal gains a ton of new functionality today in an big update.
The PlayStation Portal handheld caused head scratching when it first came out. The $200 peripheral could only run games remotely from a PS5, with no support for apps or native play. However, Sony has worked hard to bolster its feature set since launch, and this latest upgrade does away with the need to own a PlayStation entirely.
Now, you can buy-to-own "thousands" of digital PS5 games and stream them from PlayStation's cloud servers. The total number as of November 5, 2025 on PlayStation Plus tallies at 2845 games, compared to Xbox Cloud Gaming's 2107 titles. Sony also notes that you can now stream these purchased games on PS Plus' PC app, too, no PlayStation Portal required.
I recently tried PlayStation's cloud array and found it to be quite solid on PC, although not quite up to parity with the latest Xbox Cloud Gaming upgrades or NVIDIA GeForce Now. The interface could also use a ton of work, as when I last tested it it didn't even support full screen. It does, however, have tons of exclusive titles that aren't available to stream anywhere else (including Bloodborne) — and that list is only set to grow as PlayStation continues to prioritize its own ecosystem over others.
Xbox by comparison has given up entirely on exclusivity to chase CFO Amy Hood's aggressive margin requirements, removing heaps of value from the Xbox ecosystem in the process. The short term gains could result in long term pain, as users begin to realize they'll get more content on either Steam or PlayStation over Xbox's diminished content library.
But Xbox has other differentiators right? Well, perhaps not for long.
New Symbols will be added soon (website & tool), but here some nice new features from PlayStation (yes, some are old, other are unseen):- A kind of "echo mode"- PS5/PC games- "Cross-Buy" pic.twitter.com/YxIAXp750gNovember 4, 2025
@yAmethxst on X recently revealed some datamined symbolism live in PlayStation's back end systems (via Insider-Gaming), that, if real, could show Sony's intent to also target Xbox Play Anywhere.
The tags suggest that PlayStation is exploring a Xbox Play Anywhere-like cross-buy ecosystem, complete with "Cross Buy" and "PS5 / PC" tags that would be attached to PSN Store listings.
With the next Xbox looking set to be full-blown Windows, complete with support for Steam and other PC apps, PlayStation might be looking to build its own PC Store. Steam takes 30% of all transactions sent through its own store front. It would behove Sony to offer Xbox users on the next-gen ecosystem a direct way to buy games, bypassing Steam entirely to keep 100% of the revenue.
It would be an incredibly smart play on Sony's behalf. In a universe where users have become more habitual with their devices and ecosystems, meeting users on platforms they already exist is a strong play. Sony dipped its toes in with Helldivers 2 on Xbox and will likely continue to do so with other live service games like Marathon. But with the firm offering more ways than ever to access its platform — why support Xbox directly?
While Xbox cozies up to PlayStation, Sony is gunning for a total rout
Xbox President Sarah Bond says exclusives are "antiquated," and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that he wants Xbox to be more like Microsoft Office, ditching all forms of platform exclusivity. Although, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer only a few years ago described how acquiring firms like Bethesda was all about bringing exclusive games to Xbox. Times have changed, though.
In the post-Covid world, algorithmic short-form video feeds have become the hobby du jour for literal billions. Netflix is reportedly even telling its showrunners to dumb down scripts around the idea that listeners are staring at their phones rather than watching the TV. At least you can go on your phone and watch Netflix at the same time — you can't really do that with a gamepad in your hand.
The disruption is clearly creating panic among different companies. Various big publishers have posted losses, layoffs, and in some cases, have exited all together. The economy is in a weird place too, with consumer spending down across the board, with nerves about the future portending recession.
I've argued long in the past that Xbox's platform is suffering from a diffuse focus, and that could remain true. Sony is coming at this ecosystem approach with a completely blank slate building from the ground up on a fresh canvas, whereas Xbox has to wrangle decades of Windows spaghetti code to bring its vision to bear. Not to mention inter-department bureaucracy slowing things down. I was discussing with an indie developer only this morning how an issue with the Microsoft Store is preventing their game from showing up on the Xbox PC app.
With the Xbox Ally essentially acting as the beta platform for the next Xbox console, Microsoft is showing how fast it is trying to move to prepare for a universe where its competing with both Steam and PlayStation not only in the living room, but also on PC. Xbox wants to play nice, though, giving all of its games away to its competitors. Steam and PlayStation aren't going to play nice, however.
In a world where Xbox's ecosystem no longer has key differentiators like cloud and PC cross-buy, wouldn't you rather go to the near-identical ecosystem that has exclusive games too? Does anyone actually care outside of the social media bubble? We'll know for sure in the coming years ahead.
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