Xbox says it wants to be ‘more consistent’ with its PS5 release timing in future

Xbox’s studios boss has said Microsoft is going to try and be “more consistent” with its PlayStation 5 release strategy going forward.

In its continued push towards becoming a multiplatform business, Xbox released six titles for PlayStation 5 in 2025, with more planned for this year.

However, it’s been somewhat inconsistent with its release strategy so far, with some games arriving later on PS5, like Indiana Jones and Avowed, while others were released on day one, like Gears of War: Reloaded and The Outer Worlds 2.

The inconsistency is set to continue in 2026, with last week’s Xbox Developer Direct confirming Fable as a day-one release on PS5, whereas Forza Horizon 6 is arriving later on PS5.

Speaking to Games Radar, Xbox Game Studios boss, Craig Duncan, suggested that the realities of development were the reason for the later release for Forza on PS5.

“There’s always development realities about when these projects start – how big a team is, and what plans we have at the start of development,” he said. “Like you said, when a strategy changes, maybe you’ve got a plan that exists with a game and maybe you can adopt that, maybe you can’t. So that’s why.

“And to be clear, this is totally fair feedback. Sometimes we are inconsistent. You see some games in one place, some games in multiple places. Just know that we’re going to work on that, and we’re going to try and be more consistent with what we do.”

He continued: “But you know, for our game makers, if you’re on the Fable team, you just want as many people who love Fable to appreciate the great work that the team’s doing. That’s always our goal. It’s rarely more complicated than that. It’s like, how can we get this game to as many players as we can?”

Asked about the ideal scenario for its PS5 release timing going forward, Duncan stopped short of confirming it’s Xbox’s intention to release all games on day one, like it does for PC.

“My number one job is to help our teams be successful,” he said. “If I think about my role, some of that is optionality about what we do and what we approach.

“ You used the word ‘port’ before, and not to sort of pick you up on that word specifically, but wherever our games show up we want them to show up and be the best that they can be for that platform. So we want to take advantage of whatever features and nuances that the platform has.

“So that may lead to a bit of optionality. Which is to say, if we’re only in a position to release a game on a platform and not have it show up really well? Then I think we wouldn’t do that.

“I think we would have a conversation internally and go, ‘Hey, unless we can do it really well and do the right thing by those players, then…’ and that’s when you get into conversations of, well, maybe we can ship it afterwards.”

The exec continued: “Because teams are only a set size. We only have a certain amount of… ultimately, it all comes down to resource. Not everything is limitless. So we just want to do the best job, by each platform, by each game.

“So in that world, sometimes we’ll maintain optionality. Some games we might go PC first, others we might go console first. Grounded 2 is a really good example of this, which we launched into Game Preview, Steam, and PC initially. So yeah, I think it won’t always be the same.”