Rumors about Microsoft ditching its Xbox and Windows exclusivity and putting its games on its rival platform by Sony began circulating in early 2024. Soon after, Microsoft began drip-feeding Xbox games onto PlayStation. The latest of these releases is Flight Simulator 2024, which launched today on PS5. However, the idea to port the series had come up some time ago.
Speaking to XDA-Developers, Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann has revealed that he had personally suggested to Microsoft the idea of bringing the 2020 version of the game to PlayStation. This had been "probably two and a half years ago," according to Neumann, just as the studio was developing the new version and its Xbox port.
"It was my idea, actually," said Neumann when asked about who suggested the series should come to PlayStation. "With Flight Simulator 2020, we came out on PC first in August 2020. One year later, we shipped it on Xbox, and we found millions and millions of new fans on Xbox that had never seen the flight sim because they"re just not PC gamers. A lot of them thought it was great, and a lot of them stayed."
This original idea hadn"t gone anywhere at the time. Microsoft had said no to the PlayStation port, opting to keep its wildly popular simulator games on Xbox consoles and Windows PCs.
However, somebody at Sony, who was a fan of the series growing up, had reached out to Microsoft a little while later, inquiring about an official port.
"They reached out proactively to our President, who then came back to me and said, "Hey, remember when we talked about the PlayStation thing a year ago? Sony is also interested,"" he adds.
According to Neumann, this request from Sony and interest around the project might have tipped the scales, kicking off the "whole avalanche of Xbox titles coming to PlayStation."
After all the Xbox ports to PlayStation, Sony seems to be easing up on its own exclusive games too. Helldivers 2 recently landed on Xbox, while Bungie"s upcoming extraction shooter Marathon is also coming to the Microsoft console at launch.