If you had told the average Xbox or PlayStation player 15 years ago that one of the biggest PlayStation 5 games in April 2025 was the latest Forza Horizon, they probably would’ve pointed you toward the closest medical facility. But the actual big-picture truth in 2025 is even more bizarre than that already strange scenario.
In the first three months of the year, the biggest publisher on Sony’s mega-successful console is also their biggest competitor. Xbox Game Studios games accounted for more pre-orders and pre-installs via the PlayStation Store than any other, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during an earnings call this week. The impressive but peculiar stat was driven by the unprecedented run of games released by the console maker across multiple platforms over the last six months.
Last November, it released one of 2024’s biggest hits in Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6, followed by two critically acclaimed Xbox exclusives Indiana Jones And The Great Circle and Forza Horizon 5 last month. Forza Horizon 5, which was first released on Xbox One and Series consoles in 2021, topped the PlayStation Store pre-order charts for weeks before its release on April 29. The Great Circle was the top-selling PS5 game after its debut on April 17. And of course, evergreen games like Minecraft, which saw a 75 percent growth in weekly players since the recent film gargantuan success, has continued to be a top earner on PlayStation 5.
There are some other factors worth considering when analyzing this trend. As Xbox has been porting some of its best games to the market leader’s hardware, PlayStation’s first-party offerings have dwindled in recent years. Aside from some re-releases of games like Days Gone and The Last Of Us Part 2, there haven’t been a whole lot of exclusives that have moved the needle. Considering PlayStation’s library of exclusives is one of the main reasons PS5 is outselling the Xbox nearly 5-to-1, this lull period has given Xbox’s back catalog time to outshine other publishers’ slower cadence of releases.
There’s been a continued precedent of Xbox published games doing well on not just Sony’s console, but everywhere. Past Xbox-published games that have come to PlayStation, like Sea Of Thieves have found phenomenal success. Xbox Game Streaming, which has come to more devices than ever, continues to see growth, according to Microsoft. That trend is seemingly even stronger on PC, where players are buying games available on platforms like Steam and taking advantage of Xbox’s most prominent product, Game Pass. In fact, PC Game Pass saw a 45 percent growth this quarter compared to the same period a year ago, according to Nadella.
There have been plenty of rumors regarding other Xbox exclusives like Starfield and The Master Chief Collection going multiplatform next. The successes of games like Forza Horizon 5 and Indiana Jones lend credibility to those rumors. With Xbox consoles getting a price hike this year, even as its hardware sales continue to plummet, this trend is unlikely to change. It makes way more sense to put these titles on consoles where the majority of players exist, especially in the imminent shadow of the Switch 2’s launch.
Despite the harrowing update for consumers looking to buy an Xbox, been a very strong six-month period for Xbox Game Studios and its software. The publisher released the aforementioned Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 in November, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle in December, Avowed in February, and both South Of Midnight and a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in April, the latter of which also launched on PC and PlayStation 5.
Its streak will continue into the summer, as Doom: The Dark Ages releases May 15 and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 releases in July. Both titles are set to release day one on PlayStation and PC alongside Xbox consoles. It’s a safe bet that these games will continue Xbox’s success on those platforms.
