How 2025’s Xbox-published games sold on PS5
We look at how well 10 2025 Xbox games – from Oblivion Remastered to Ninja Gaiden 4 – performed on PlayStation.
Earlier this week, we shared our estimates on Forza Horizon 5 passing 5M copies sold on PS5. Since then, we’ve had some requests for estimates on other 2025 Xbox-published games on PlayStation.
We’ve already covered Forza, and we’ll be diving into Black Ops 7 in a future edition of the newsletter, so this analysis includes all the other 2025 Xbox-published games that sold over 100K on PlayStation.
Let’s dive in.
Remakes of 20-year-old games led the pack
Oblivion Remastered (April 22, 2025) has sold 1.1M copies on PS5, proving the pull of Bethesda’s legacy catalogue on PlayStation hardware. It launched on all platforms simultaneously.
Xbox completed its acquisition of Bethesda in March 2021, and Bethesda games have a long history on PlayStation before this. Around 71% of Oblivion Remastered players on PS5 previously played Skyrim on a PS4 or PS5.
Over 80% of Oblivion’s PS5 copies were sold during its first month on the market, but some discounts to $33 over the past couple of months have led to small sales spikes:
Around half of Oblivion Remastered players on PS5 played for less than 15 hours, showing that most people got their nostalgia fix before meaningfully progressing.
I expect to see Starfield outperforming Oblivion Remastered’s numbers when it inevitably comes to PS5 (likely this year with the rumoured 2.0 update).
Another iconic 2005 title also got a remake last year. Gears of War Reloaded, which launched on August 26 2025, moved 572K units on PS5.
It came to Steam, Xbox, and PS5 simultaneously. Gears Reloaded shifted 202K on Xbox and 73K on Steam, so the PS5 version sold twice as many copies as the other platforms combined:
Here’s how I explain the better copies sold performance on PS5, despite Gears being an Xbox icon and Xbox players being more drawn to shooters in general:
A heavy wave of nostalgia from gamers who originally played the series on the Xbox 360 but transitioned to the PS4 for the following generation. For these players, of which there were many, Gears Reloaded offered a way to reconnect with a formative part of their gaming history on their current hardware of choice. Anecdotally, a few of my old mates from the Xbox 360 days did this.
Game Pass cannibalised sales on Xbox and PC: Our estimates show that 1.6 million players accessed Gears of War Reloaded via Game Pass (console and PC). It’s safe to assume that many of these core gamers would have bought Gears Reloaded if it weren’t part of their subscription.
Pure novelty and curiosity among lifelong PlayStation users who have spent two decades hearing about Gears without having a way to play it. Meanwhile, the first game has been released and even remastered before on Xbox and PC platforms, where Gears sequels are also available.
While the initial sales figures are impressive, the long-term health of the Gears brand on PlayStation might struggle due to this choice of first impression:
The multiplayer experience in the original Gears of War is punishing for newcomers due to the dominant shotgun-and-roll meta that dominates play.
The single-player level design has come a long way since 2005, making Gears 1’s campaign feel clunky and dated (co-op still rules, though)
As the mechanics weren’t modernised for this release, there’s a risk that the antiquated feel of the game could sour the brand among a fresh audience.
I’d have waited for 2026’s Gears of War E-Day for Gears to make its PS5 debut, to be honest.
Niches galore: These games from franchises big and small also sold over 100K on PlayStation
As for the rest of the list:
DOOM: The Dark Ages, which launched on May 13 2025, has sold around 500k copies on PlayStation. This is a decent performance, but The Dark Ages has performed a little lower than expected across the board versus Doom Eternal. The high $70 launch price in a crowded release window made this one a difficult sell for many players, despite the quality of the game. So-called boomer shooters are becoming more niche by the year. Sucks to be me.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle matched the performance of other major Bethesda releases with 493K copies sold. The Indiana Jones license likely helped bridge the gap for players who may have been unfamiliar with the developer’s previous work. Indy came to PS5 in April 2025, four months after the Xbox and Steam release. A simultaneous launch and one big marketing push would have helped Indy sell better on PS5, whose single-player-first gamers tend to have FOMO during review season.
THPS 3+4 sold 227K copies on PlayStation, managing to find a dedicated but smaller audience of franchise fans. The steady sales suggest that there is still a market for arcade-style sports titles, even if they no longer reach the heights seen in previous console generations.
Ninja Gaiden 4 sold 206K copies on PS5. These tepid numbers reflect a stable niche for difficult, combat-heavy titles within the broader ecosystem. It’s a return to the fast-paced, pure character-action genre, offering an alternative to the slower, RPG-focused difficulty of Soulslikes. 59% of PS5’s Ninja Gaiden 4 players previously played Devil May Cry 5, while 78% played Ghost of Tsushima (its top game by crossover). It seems Ninja Gaiden 4 has attracted samurai fans and character-action aficionados alike.
Microsoft Flight Simulator has sold 167K copies on PS5 since it was ported on December 3 2025. This is a great performance for a niche simulation experience. The high barrier to entry and specialised control requirements often limit the ceiling for such games on consoles. Around 10% of the PS5 players have already played for over 50 hours (the port’s only been out for a month!), so there is already a dedicated player base.
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, another PC-first title that was ported in May 2025, also performed pretty well on PlayStation, conquering 147K copies sold and expanding its reach beyond the PC market. Bringing a legacy real-time strategy game to PlayStation is a complex task, and these sales figures show a modest but engaged group of strategy fans.
The Outer Worlds 2 has sold 135K copies sold on PS5, marking a quiet start for the sequel. Despite the success of the first game, this entry faced stiff competition in a crowded RPG market during the holiday season (and during a busy year all-round). It launched on October 24, between Battlefield 6 and ARC Raiders. Xbox probably should have waited until January – a quieter window – to have given this one a better chance.
Age of Mythology: Retold rounded out the list with 111K copies sold, again reflecting the surprising specific appeal of the strategy subgenre on console. Like its sibling title, Age of Empires, it overcame the inherent challenge of translating complex RTS mechanics to a controller.
PlayStation has become a vital component of the Xbox business model. The 10 games above alone represent hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for Xbox – and that’s not even including revenues from Forza Horizon 5, Call of Duty, and games released before 2025.
While hardware sales for the Series consoles continue to plummet, software attach rates on the PS5 provide a necessary financial cushion for Microsoft’s publishing arm.
The success of legacy titles proves that the PlayStation audience is hungry for the Xbox catalogue, but it also reveals a tension in Microsoft’s current release strategy.
As we look toward 2026, we should expect a move away from staggered releases in favour of a day-and-date multi-platform approach.
The sales friction caused by port delays and the retail cannibalisation caused by Game Pass are becoming harder to ignore – and we’re seeing that reflected in Microsoft’s strategy.
To maximise the ROI on massive productions like Starfield’s 2.0 or the next Forza, Xbox will likely need to treat the PlayStation user base as a day-one priority rather than a secondary revenue stream. ROI is the name of the game for Xbox these days, not subscription numbers, so I expect they’ll try to make this happen.
The “console war” in its traditional sense is over for Xbox, replaced by a new era of platform-agnostic publishing. PlayStation is creeping in that direction as well … but that’s a story for another day.
Cool links and other stuff
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This is the best free Substack anywhere. Live reading these when they come out, hard numbers with some personal opinion/speculation.
Loved you on Sacred Symbols+ and loving your stuff even more here, Rhys. Keep up the great work.
Ps criminally low numbers on PS5 for Outer Worlds 2 and Doom, especially since these WERE day and date releases on PS5.