GameStop has declared the console wars between Xbox and PlayStation officially over after it was announced that Halo: Campaign Evolved will be coming out on PS5.
The retail gaming company released a statement on Saturday written in the style of an amendment, calling itself a “Neutral Entity” in signaling the end of the console wars as a result of the upcoming Halo title releasing on PS5 next year with cross-platform play. It noted that the console war between PlayStation and Xbox started with the release of Halo: Combat Evolved as an Xbox-exclusive title in 2001. Halo: Campaign Evolved is a remake of that game.
You can read GameStop’s full statement in the tweet below.
GameStop announcing the end of the console war between PlayStation and Xbox feels like a sign of history repeating itself. The first console war between Nintendo and Sega began in the mid-1980s and spilled over to the early ‘90s, when Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis and released Mortal Kombat at the same time Nintendo did. That war ended when Nintendo released the N64 in 1996, forcing the CEO of Sega of America at the time, Tom Kalinske, to step down. The Dreamcast, Sega’s last console, got discontinued in 2001, three years after its initial release in Japan.
Today, with Halo: Campaign Evolved releasing on consoles outside of Xbox, there are rumors circulating that Microsoft may stop developing Xbox consoles, even though the company maintains it is developing a next-gen Xbox console. The problem is, Microsoft hiked up the price of the Xbox Series X|S twice this year, to the point where it’s become unaffordable for many. So much so that Costco cleared its Xbox inventory both in stores and online, and a Bloomberg report revealed that Xbox set a goal to produce 30% profit margins, which has been causing console price hikes, project cancellations, and layoffs.
