Xbox CEO: Working With PlayStation Still on the Table After Physint Shakeup

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says collaboration with PlayStation can coexist with competition, even after Kojima's Physint moved to Xbox. Forza Horizon 6 and Fable are still coming to PS5.

Did you hear the one about Xbox and PlayStation actually working together? Sounds wild, right? But Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says it's still happening, even after Hideo Kojima's Physint jumped ship from Sony to Microsoft.

Let's rewind. Sony recently dropped Kojima's Metal Gear successor, Physint, and Microsoft swooped in to pick it up. That's a big deal, especially since both PlayStation and Xbox have been pulling back from multiplatform releases and reemphasizing exclusives. But according to Sharma, that doesn't mean the two console giants are done collaborating. As she told The New York Times: "Competition and collaboration can coexist."

And she's not just talking the talk. Xbox still has several ongoing projects with PlayStation. Forza Horizon 6 and Fable are both set to come to PS5, and franchises like Call of Duty and Minecraft remain multiplatform affairs. So while the console warriors might be drawing battle lines, the actual business is a lot more nuanced.

The NYT write-up also mentions that Sharma "laughed" at the idea of apologizing to Sony for the whole Physint kerfuffle. Fair enough—if you snagged a Kojima game, you probably wouldn't be sorry either. The outlet reports that Xbox's agreement with Kojima was "substantially below" development costs for a AAA game, and it includes film and TV rights for the project. Rumors had floated that Kojima was seeking around $400 million for Physint, but a new edition of The Game Business suggests Xbox is paying "far, far less than that number," potentially under $200 million.

For years, Xbox pursued a multiplatform strategy that culminated in several major first-party games getting PS5 ports. That strategy shifted when Sharma took over from Phil Spencer, but plenty of Xbox games are still headed to PS5. Meanwhile, PlayStation never fully embraced multiplatform the way Xbox briefly did, though a few games—like Bungie's Marathon—did land on competing consoles. Sony's big experiment was on PC, and now it's pulling back from that too.

So yes, competition and collaboration can coexist, but it still feels a little one-sided in the modern console war. What do you think—will you be picking up any of these cross-platform games? Let us know in the comments!