Xboxboss Phil Spencer recently toldBloombergthat the company hasno “red lines"on which of its games can be ported to other consoles. Though Spencer said that it’s too early to say whether that means the next gaspHalogame will launch onSonyhardware, he also, notably, did not rule it out.
Given that Xbox has had success bringingHi-Fi Rush,Pentiment,Sea of Thieves, andGroundedto other consoles — and thatIndiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to hit PS5 next year— it seems like Xbox is quietly entering its Sega-after-Dreamcast era. If that’s the case, and this pillar of the console industry is going to become a software publisher first and foremost, let’s drop the facade and do the thing that would make everybody happy: bringGame Passto PS5.
Switch, too, and Switch 2 while we’re at it.
How Would PS5 Game Pass Even Work?
This would come with some obvious problems, especially at first. Many of the marquee Game Pass games aren’t available on PS5. No Halos, no Starfield, none of the games from Rare Replay, and none of the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games before Skyrim and Fallout 4. So, Game Pass on PS5 might, initially, need to be a bit bare bones, or supplement its offerings with Sony games. Given that Sony has its own subscription service in PlayStation Plus, that could be a bit of a sticky wicket.
But none of these issues are insurmountable, and with the right payout structure that fairly rewards Sony, Xbox, and the games' developers, it seems like it could benefit all parties involved. In an ideal world, there would only be one Game Pass, where Sony and Xbox games could all land at launch. If I’m paying an increasingly steep monthly fee for Game Pass, it would be nice to not have to shell out for PS Plus, too.
If I can play Game Pass games on my TV and PC and smartphone, why not let me play them on my PS5 and Switch? Xbox already has a cloud streaming option, and both Sony and Nintendo support cloud-based gaming, so porting Xbox classics wouldn’t even be necessary. At least, not to get the ball rolling. Throw them up with a streaming option, then gradually make them available for download if the initial foray is successful enough to fund the ports.
There wererumors that Xbox would come to Switch years ago. Thatnever materialized, and Microsoft games have only ever landed on the Nintendo console sporadically — a Minecraft here, a Sea of Thieves there. But, at this point, we should just rip the Band-Aid off. Let’s get Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Switch. Throw every Gears of War on PS5. Let me play the Rare Replay games on a Nintendo console like Conker intended. We’re on the verge of a future where platforms are no longer dividing walls between players. Let’s hurry up and get there.
