Microsoft’s decision to release more of its games on the PlayStation 5 has apparently led to a big windfall for the company, as a new report said Xbox games on PlayStation have made more than $650 million in gross revenue so far. This report from Alinea Analytics came out not long after new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said she and her leadership team, including chief content officer Matt Booty, would consider changes to the company’s controversial multiplatform strategy.
The report said Forza Horizon 5, which came to PS5 in 2025, made up $323 million in gross revenue alone after selling more than 5.8 million copies on Sony’s console. Sea of Thieves ranked second in terms of copies sold on PS5, reaching 2.7 million units and around $100 million in revenue. Oblivion Remastered was third, selling a reported 1.2 million copies on PS5 and generating $58 million in revenue.
Those were the only three Xbox games to clear 1 million in sales on PS5, according to the report, but Grounded ranked No. 4 with 770,000 copies sold and $24 million in revenue. The report did not include Call of Duty games, which are now owned by Microsoft following its buyout of Activision Blizzard.
Also in the report, Rhys Elliott of Alinea said the recent “We Are Xbox” memo from Sharma and Booty, in which the pair said they may make changes to Xbox exclusivity, is more lip service than anything for now. The data shows there is a “demonstrated audience” for Xbox games on Sony’s platform, he said.
Xbox’s recent fan-friendly changes like dropping the price of Game Pass, changing the Xbox logo to revert to the golden era of Xbox, and changing the name from Microsoft Gaming to Xbox is simply rhetoric for now. “This feels like a temporary appeasement strategy for the Xbox core. Optics,” he said.
“Expect more tactical tweaks to exclusivity in the short term, but the underlying motivation is simple: brand visibility. Microsoft needs to put its software where the players actually are,” Elliott explained.
The analyst said another possibility is that Xbox management doesn’t actually know where it’s taking Xbox in the future and that the “We Are Xbox” memo might actually represent “real strategic uncertainty dressed in confident language.”
On the subject of reverting to exclusivity for Xbox games, Sharma recently said the company will take a “data-driven approach and a strategic-driven approach” to decide what happens next. Sharma said she wants to make “the right decision, not the fastest decision” because such a decision has major ramifications. Whatever Sharma and the team land on in terms of exclusives will amount to “long-swinging decisions that have a decade-long impact,” she said.
Sharma also said there could be changes to “windowing” for Xbox games, which followed on from a report that said some other games beyond Call of Duty titles could be kept out of Game Pass at launch and for a period of time.
Microsoft claimed the shift in strategy to release more games on more platforms was an effort to break down the traditional console walls and meet people where they are. But the decision was criticized by core fans. With regards to multiplatform releases, Microsoft maintained that there was no one specific formula, and that the company would make decisions on a title-by-title basis, or at least it did under the leadership of Phil Spencer. It remains to be seen how things may change with Sharma running the show now.
