It’s a busy time at Xbox as the company once again changes trajectories by reinstating exclusive games in the form of Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution. And now it seems in the midst of that chaos, Xbox may have annoyed Sony a little bit.
In Jason Schreier’s report in Bloomberg on June 10, the journalist revealed a lot of what Asha Sharma and Matt Booty then published as an open letter. But one thing he mentioned that the Xbox duo didn’t is that a Halo: Campaign Evolved trailer was going to be at least week’s PlayStation State of Play, and was pulled from the event.
“Sharma and her team also pulled a Halo trailer that was due to appear at a PlayStation event last week,” wrote Schreier. “potentially damaging the relationship between the two companies, according to people familiar with the change of plans.”
This may be because of something that occured a few weeks back. Matt Booty was a guest on the official Xbox podcast where he discussed remaining transparent about what platforms their games would launch on. But just days later, Asha Sharma reversed that based on fan feedback, saying the company would stop showing rival competitor’s logos during their Showcase.
However, if you watched the showcase, you’ll probably have noted that they did actually show competitor’s logos, including a PS5 logo on the Halo: Campaign Evolved trailer.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Halo being pulled from the event. Christopher Dring apparently stated in his Game Business newsletter that, “There’s gossip at Summer Game Fest that Xbox had planned to have a game at PlayStation’s State of Play showcase, but decided against it, which has angered Sony.”
The quote appeared on Resetera and was picked up by several other outlets, but I want to note that I can’t actually find the quote in the original article. It seems that a part of the original paragraph is still there, but the reference to gossip and a game being pulled no longer exists. Perhaps Dring decided to remove it as he didn’t have any hard evidence.
Tom Warren of The Verge then posted on social media, retweeting the Halo: Campaign Evolved trailer that was captured on a PS5 Pro and pointedly said that it “would have made more sense if it was originally supposed to be part of Sony’s State of Play…”
Reb’s Gaming, a well-know insider when it comes to all things Halo, outright said the trailer was intended for State of Play.
If it’s true and Xbox decided to pull the trailer, Sony would indeed have been annoyed as it means having to replan and re-dit chunks of their show to account for the missing title. Depending on the timeframe, they may have been left with limited time to find a replacement, too. While I doubt this will destroy the relationship between the two, it’s still risky to annoy your business partners like that.
Clearly Sharma and co. think it’s worth it as part of their sweeping changes, though. They might be releasing Halo on PS5 – and even future Halo games because they publically said all future Halo titles would come to PlayStation – but that doesn’t mean they have to let the competition show it off as well.
Whatever happened, it seems all of this was quite last minute, a bit like how Xbox seems to have made the decision to turn Gears of War: E-Day into an Xbox exclusive at the last minute as well.
WGB 