On May 5, Xbox announced a new remaster of the original 2006 Gears of War. Yes, this is the second time Xbox has remastered Gears of War. But this time, Xbox is doing something that a decade ago would have seemed extremely unlikely: Gears of War Reloaded is coming to PlayStation 5. And while it’s not the first time Xbox has brought an exclusive to PlayStation, it’s still really weird!
Early last year, you might remember the chaos that hit the Xbox faithful when rumors and reports began to surface that Microsoft was looking at possibly porting games like Gears of War to PlayStation. Then in February, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that four games, including Sea of Thieves, would arrive on PS5. Since then, other Xbox exclusives like Forza Horizon 5 have also made the leap, and Spencer has been clear that no game is too far. There is no red line. Anything could arrive on PlayStation in the future. Even Halo. So it shouldn’t be weird to see Gears of War being promoted by the official PlayStation account on Twitter. And yet...it is still very weird.
In April, I played the Marathon alpha. Bungie’s extraction shooter didn’t really win me over, but each time I booted it up I was greeted by a PlayStation Studios logo, as the former Halo maker is now owned by PlayStation. This was odd to see on my Xbox, but it didn’t stand out too much. But Gears of War on PlayStation is so bizarre. It’s one of Xbox’s big three: Forza, Halo, Gears. Now only one of them remains truly Xbox only.
Gears on PS5 is the kind of weird idea that, a decade ago or more, you’d hear someone suggest and you’d laugh at. Like some random, clueless analyst pondering when Mario will arrive on Xbox. Never gonna happen dude, don’t you know anything? I remember being a younger lad and being one of the few people at my middle school to own an Xbox. They all had PlayStation 3s. They all were jealous of Gears of War. Some of them would tell me that Gears was coming to PS3 one day. And Halo. I’d shake my head. I knew better. I read all the gaming magazines of the day. I scrolled through gaming forums and consumed GameSpot articles. They were wrong. Gears of War would never be on a PlayStation console. Well, turns out they were right, they were just about 18 years ahead of the schedule.
So while I understand the business reasons for Gears coming to PlayStation and I’ve seen plenty of other Xbox-published games arrive on non-Xbox consoles, it’s all still very weird for me to watch. I’ll probably have to sit down when I see the news of Halo on PS5. At least more people will now have access to more games. That’s cool, even if younger me would never have believed any of this was possible.
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