Xbox treating the PlayStation how PlayStation treats the PC is only fair

This year’s Tokyo Game Show is now in the rearview mirror, but racing game fans got some great news: Forza Horizon 6, the successor to one of the most enjoyable Xbox titles ever released, will be Japan-themed and out in 2026. The announcing trailer was disappointingly vague, but the best arcade racer in the business returning after six years is definitely exciting. Not only was Forza Horizon 5 one of the most popular driving games ever on Xbox and PC, but it did extremely well on the PS5 too, selling more than 3.1 million copies in less than six months.

Which is precisely why a lot of people were not expecting a a little footnote discretely placed in Microsoft’s official announcement blog post for Forza Horizon 6 stating: “Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios are also working together to bring Forza Horizon 6 to PlayStation 5 post-launch”. In other words, when it does launch at some point in the next year, Microsoft Game Studios’ new title will not be getting a PS5 version along with the Xbox and PC ones. That will come at a later date and Microsoft did not commit to a specific release window.

Well, if that’s something of a message, it can be interpreted in various ways. The obvious one: Microsoft does not have or does not want to invest enough resources in the development of Forza Horizon 6 so as to bring all three versions – Xbox Series S/X, PC and PS5/PS5 Pro – to market at the same time, despite this making the most sense financially (as the Xbox and PC versions will presumably launch on Game Pass too).

This being Microsoft, of course, it’s not that it does not have the resources: its management just doesn’t feel like spending them on anything non-AI, probably, which is a different discussion altogether. But there’s also another possibility: Microsoft may simply not want to be seen (yet?) as offering its most valuable, most popular gaming franchises to Sony day-and-date with the Xbox and PC, while it’s quite clear that Sony has no intention of bringing even a couple of its famous PlayStation franchises to Xbox any time soon.

Based on how most of Microsoft Game Studios’ games out on PlayStation have performed so far – not just Forza Horizon 5 but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Doom: The Dark Ages and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered too – Microsoft may also feel pretty certain that Forza Horizon 6 will sell very well on the PS5/PS5 Pro regardless of when it comes to market. The company is most probably right about that, as there really isn’t an arcade racing game quite like Forza Horizon for the PlayStation out there (the reason why FH5 did so well in the first place) and there’s no indication that one will be made available within the next 12-18 months or so.

There’s a third possibility that currently seems rather unlikely, but one that would make a lot of sense if it turned out to be part of Microsoft’s future plans for the Xbox: if the company manages to actually release the next Xbox in late 2026 – a whole year before the PlayStation6 is widely expected – then Forza Horizon 6 would make for a great launch title, definitely one worth leveraging as a timed exclusive. There’s a lot of speculation around the next Xbox at the moment, but it stands to reason that Microsoft would rather have a first move advantage than compete with the PS6 for position in the high-end console market come late 2027.

Whatever the case may be, it’s only fair that Xbox treats the PlayStation the same way PlayStation treats the PC. That’s still better than how PlayStation treats the Xbox, one might say, even if Microsoft and Sony are supposedly following different paths to success nowadays. Sony has been careful regarding how and when to offer its most valuable PS franchises to PC gamers, striking a delicate balance between retaining the PlayStation advantage of first-party content exclusivity while scoring as many sales as it possibly can from an adjacent, supplementary market on the same content (with minimal resources invested in bringing it across too).

Maybe Microsoft should do the exact same thing, then. That is, not go for maximum revenue from every AAA Xbox release: it should let its loyal customers enjoy its best productions first, even if that means it will be leaving some money on the table. That would be the least the company could do to make up for the many ways it failed these consumers over the last decade. Plus, it would help the ailing Xbox brand keep some of its power ahead of the release of the next Xbox console, which would not be a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.