Xbox's Matt Booty on Halo Coming to PS5: 'Our Biggest Competition Isn't Another Console' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 24 October 2025 / 5,911 Views
Microsoft announced today a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved called Halo: Campaign Evolved, and for the first time the series will be releasing on a PlayStation console.
President of Xbox game content and studios Matt Booty speaking with The New York Times discussed the shift for Xbox as it has also released other big Xbox exclusives like Forza Horizon 5 and Gears of War: Reloaded on PlayStation 5 this year.
He said that consumers no longer have a strong attachment to the devices they use to play games on and the hope by bringing Halo to PlayStation is to attract more people into the Xbox ecosystem.
"We are all seeking to meet people where they are," said Booty on Microsoft's shift in strategy.
He added, "Our biggest competition isn't another console. We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies."
Halo: Campaign Evolved will launch for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store, and Xbox Game Pass in 2026.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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“He said that consumers no longer have a strong attachment to the devices they use to play games on”
Given the brand loyalty some people have to Nintendo or PlayStation, I would have believed otherwise.
Generally speaking, the younger generation doesn't care about platform
Most of the fanboys are either diehard for a specific franchise or are 00s, 90s, and 80s kids that never grew up
I bet you dont have kids?
There is verry much a sony vs nintendo vs pc camps in schools.
Kind of like in proff sports, people cheering on one team but not the other are
diehards or people who never grew up
I definitely don't see that with my kid and his peers. They don't care at all about the brand of device, aside from Apple phones. But, even the Apple thing appears to be less significant than it was with kids a decade ago. Their concern seems more about being able to Facetime than having an Apple device because its and Apple.
I've kids and they dont care what box they play on as long as they can play Fortnite and Roblox etc.
I have three kids and none of them care what platform they play on, as long as they can play games that their friends currently play. Switch is a Mario Kart machine and PC is cool because you can you download mods. If you ask them what they like, they would like all of their games to work on their phones. If one day Nintendo start releasing their games on PlayStation (truly world ending news on this site) I bet their reaction would be "ok".
Practically though if one console offers no exclusives, and the others offer exclusives made by Sony plus all franchises that used to be Xbox exclusives, which would most people buy?
You don’t have to be a diehard fanboy to see the latter is the more practical chocie.
your statement is so wrong that is not even worth responding if you actually think that younger generation dont care about ecosystems.
No yours is wrong if you think its such a big deal now.
What are you talking about?
Younger people literally laugh when someone mention Xbox name.
They all know most of Sony IPs and almost none of MS IPs.
Its not about console wars anymore, its about brand loyalty.
Console wars dont exist for almost 10 years now because PS is so far ahead that MS will never even come close unless they change their strategy and return to Xbox and MS store only games.
I dont know about you but my kids and most of their friends dont even know Sony IP's such as God of war/ Uncharted etc belong to Sony or care about them as it isnt the games they want to play.. They know Roblox, They know Fortnite, Cod etc. Oh Wait they know Spider Man (One Sony IP). They know they can play them games on PS5 etc but thats about it. But if you think they care about Eco Systems i hate to break it to you but they dont.
This 100%, ive been sayin this for years now. Yes the is "Die Hard" kid fans that was maybe raised by die hard fans. But no one really cares anymore as long as they can play the games they want to play. Console Wars is and has been a Negative on consoles since they started turning into PC's. No one wants to buy 3 or 4 different boxes to play games.
Yeah it's Xbox managment and replacing people with AI
Tiktok and movies?` Nah the real enemy is SteamOS.
That is the one you really don't want taking off and eating market share.
why dont they just come out and say it's valve/steam os. I mean the steam deck must have scared them to death, first time pc gaming is taking place outside of the windows os in a major way.
Ofc he will say that they dont compete against Playstation. I most likely would do the same if i was the one of the 3 people (Bond and Spencer are other 2) who is responsible for destruction of Xbox brand. I will just say that i feel bad for people who went in to this console generation thinking that MS will do something good with Xbox name (i bet that next console wont even be called Xbox)
They probably won’t ditch the Xbox brand but I would be amazed if it even sold as well of the Series XS or Xbox One, especially if it costs $1000.
It feels like in order to chase and hit this 30% profit margin in the short-term they may well cannibalise their long-term market.
Of course not. They are a publisher now.
m$ moving the goal posts as always
Microsoft: "We'll keep changing our competition until we win"
Yeah keep telling urself that u ain't competing with other consoles lol
Don't make an Xbox and become sega then you can back up those words u throwing
MS basically has stabbed every dedicated Xbox owner in the back!
That's cool and all, but you still need to make good decisions to get people interested in your product. Doesn't matter what the competition is.
I know what he's trying to say, but I think he has the wrong angle. Every game exclusive or not has one thing in common, taking up people's time. A game can pull people away from another game. If he said that their biggest competition is people's time with videogames (especially the F2P games) I don't think people would disagree with him. So by putting their games on PS5 (and Switch 2 in the future) they're trying to grab as many people's time as possible as that's how they're gonna grow.
Yeah and when I start losing in chess I tell my opponents I don't compete with them I'm really competing with Costco...
Some of the biggest franchises in existence are non-exclusive. Putting Master Chief on multiple devices outside of XBox increases the IP's reach.
He's talking entertainment as competition, right? To compete for the attention and money of all consumers all the time. On that note, their competition is books, TV, netflix, sports.
Feel like this is being said from the perspective of Microsoft wanting them to compete with other media platforms, the idea of belittling their current competition because they couldn't compete, so they aren't just competing with other entertainment platforms.
Many of these forms of entertainment overlap massively, you can use TikTok and and dedicated to a platform that is competing directly against Xbox Games but TikTok isn't competiting against Microsoft.
