While Microsoft has confirmed some of its upcoming first-party games, like Fable, will come to PlayStation 5, others, like Gears of War: E-Day, have yet to have their possible multiplatform status confirmed. That’s given hope to some Xbox diehards that it could remain exclusive as new gaming CEO Asha Sharma re-evaluates that part of the Microsoft’s strategy. But a new Walmart listing appearing just hours ahead of the Xbox summer showcase may have just extinguished that possibility.
A placeholder Walmart store page for Gears of War: E-Day was discovered earlier tonight and it lists a PS5 version for the game. It also includes a price of $100 for the “standard” version of the game and several “TBD” bullet points for the product details. That indicates that this information could be subject to change. Either the PS5 part of the listing is accurate and it accidentally went live early, or the information is just a guess that’s subject to change once Microsoft holds its showcase on June 7.
That event will include an hour-long Gears of War: E-Day Direct. In addition to a deep-dive into the story and gameplay, we’re also likely to get a release date (currently rumored to be sometime in the fall), followed by confirmation of whether the game will come day-and-date to other platforms, remain a timed-exclusive like Forza Horizon 6, or kept completely off of PS5.
That last option would buck Microsoft’s recent multiplatform strategy which saw the Gears franchise come to PlayStation for the very first time last summer in the form of a remaster of the original game. It sold decently there, according to some estimates, making it seem like an obvious choice to bring the new game to PS5 players as well. But Sharma is currently facing pressure for Xbox loyalists to reverse that trend.
“At the same time, we’re increasingly becoming a platform,” she told Bloomberg this week. “In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so we’re looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title and how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry.”
Gears of War: E-Day will be the first litmus test for where that balance falls in terms of Sharma’s vision for Xbox.