The Console Wars Are Officially Ending

On Aug. 26, gamers booted up their consoles and killed a whole lot of bugs. While that may not sound newsworthy on the surface, Sony and Microsoft were actually making history.

That’s because PlayStation gamers were getting their first taste of Marcus Fenix’s classic Locust-blasting adventure in Gears of War: Reloaded, a remaster of a gritty third-person shooter classic — and a former Xbox exclusive game.

And at the very same time, Xbox players were pumping lead into man-sized democracy-hating Terminid bugs as they got their hands on Helldivers 2, a visceral sci-fi shooter that was immediately popular, but restricted to PS5 and PC players until now. It was also one of the few successes from PlayStation’s live service push, in which the brand attempted to heavily invest in games that are frequently updated with new limited content and make revenue through microtransactions.

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Sony and Microsoft didn’t just ease up by letting these games go to “the other side.” They actively collaborated on a Helldivers microtransaction to bring armor and weapons from Halo — one of the biggest Xbox franchises ever, practically synonymous with the brand — into the formerly PlayStation console-locked game.

For decades, gaming industry wisdom led Sony, Microsoft and even Nintendo and Sega to keep their most exciting games restricted to their own consoles. That exclusivity inspired tribalism among fans, leading to “console wars” that had gamers insisting their platform was superior. 

Today, Nintendo retains an iron grip on its games to keep them on the Switch and Switch 2, and Sega left the hardware race long ago. But at long last, Sony and Microsoft are allowing their franchises to be played on rival consoles as part of a broader strategy from both companies that prioritizes selling game copies no matter the platform. The long-standing exclusivity freeze began to thaw years ago, using PC gaming as a bridge between the long-divided camps. 

Microsoft expanded its Game Pass subscription to PC in 2019, and Sony started to trickle its exclusives onto the Steam storefront, starting with Horizon Zero Dawn in 2020. Other flagship games God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man and The Last of Us made the jump in recent years. Other game publishers with pseudo-exclusivity also started releasing games on PC, like Square Enix with Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth as well as Final Fantasy XVI. 

As Microsoft has snapped up key acquisitions like Activision-Blizzard, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has assuaged fears that mammoth franchises like Call of Duty will become console exclusives.

“We have no goal of somehow trying to use Call of Duty to get you to buy an Xbox console,” he said on the official Xbox podcast. “For Call of Duty players on PlayStation, and in the future, I want you to feel 100% a part of the community.”

Players are responding (mostly) positively to easing game exclusivity, too. All it takes is one look at the Gears of War and Helldivers 2 subreddits to see forums full of gamers that are happy to share their favorite experiences with a new audience. For games like Helldivers that live and die by the number of players actively seeking matches with each other, these console ports can also juice the community: The game reached its highest concurrent player count since launch on Xbox release day.

But even with all these games coming to other platforms, we should expect gaming’s biggest companies to keep some prizes for themselves. As long as Microsoft and Sony are both in the business of selling gaming hardware, their competition will never truly end. Some console exclusivity still exists, and it’s not likely that the top heavy-hitting games like Spider-Man 2 or Halo Infinite will ever make the jump to rival gaming consoles.

But games like Gears of War: Reloaded and Helldivers 2 becoming accessible to everyone means the days of ratcheting up exclusive content seem to be coming to a close. And the result is a net positive: more player choice and more opportunities to play with friends. Sony and Microsoft are starting to blur the line in the sand — and we should take advantage of that to play some cool, new games, no matter our platform.