If you’ve been living under a rock, you might have missed what I’d call a historic moment in gaming; PlayStation and Xbox have seemingly ended their decade-long rivalry by spotlighting each other’s games.
Xbox got a head start with more titles landing across platforms, but PlayStation might just be catching up fast. Helldivers 2 has already proven to be a breakout success if sales speculation is to believed, and I can’t see PlayStation not porting more games to Xbox.
The welcome surprise, Xbox and PlayStation swap banners
In what can only be described as historic, PlayStation’s Twitter (now X) is headlining a Gears of War game as its banner. Meanwhile, Xbox has swapped in Helldivers 2 for its own. It feels like a symbolic end to a long-running rivalry between the two platforms, one that many players are glad to see fade away.
The competition between Xbox and PlayStation spans decades. Back in the Xbox 360 era, it looked like Microsoft had the upper hand. But the disastrous launch of the Xbox One, under the then-president Don Mattrick, quickly shifted momentum. His infamous, and forgive me whilst I paraphrase: “If you want to play offline, we have a console for you, the Xbox 360,” became a PR nightmare.
PlayStation seized the moment, directly mocking Xbox’s strict DRM policies. They even released a tongue-in-cheek video showing how to share physical PlayStation games; simply handing the disc to a friend. The jab perfectly captured the mood of the time and helped cement Sony’s dominance throughout the PS4 generation.
Why this matters, a move beyond social media
Things felt simpler back then, Xbox’s DRM features, once ridiculed, now feel like the reality we’re all living through as gaming becomes more digital. The Xbox Series S is fully disc-free, and both the PS5 Slim and PS5 Pro lean into the same approach, with Sony even selling an external disc drive as an add-on for the PS5 Pro. In a way, the vision that Xbox pushed with the Xbox One has quietly come to fruition.
But it’s easy to dwell on how bad things were or how messy they seemed at the time. The arrival of Helldivers 2 on Xbox, and Gears of War on PlayStation is something worth celebrating. For me, there was a time when I was worried about Xbox’s “This is an Xbox” strategy meant it was sliding into becoming just another third-party publisher.
Lately, though, it’s clear that whilst they’re releasing on other console, there’s more to it. It’s not really about what box you play on anymore — it’s about the fact you get to enjoy the games wherever you choose to play.
The bigger picture for gaming
I recently went back and completed Gears of War on insane difficulty on the Xbox 360 ahead of Gears of War: Reloaded’s release. Seeing more than a million players across Xbox, PlayStation, and PC jump into the franchise is a great reminded of how Gears helped make Xbox a household name.
On the flip side, I’ve been busy spreading democracy in Helldivers 2. Thanks to its release on Xbox, I can finally join my friends, and yes — I grabbed the Halo ODST Warbond straight away.
Helldivers 2 also brings me back to the feeling of Halo 3 multiplayer on the Xbox 360. You’d be in a lobby before or after a match chatting with random people, making friends, and just having fun. That kind of social experience feels rare today, with skill-based matchmaking and more rigid systems often pushing spontaneous interaction to the side.
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