Microsoft discusses anticipation of Indiana Jones on PS5: “We want Xbox players to have a great experience”

Xbox Studios head Matt Booty said waiting for PlayStation 5 owners to play Bethesda’s new hit Indiana Jones game is “as much a production decision as anything else.”

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is widely considered to be excellent, is now available on PC and Xbox, including through Game Pass. The PlayStation 5’s launch was publicly confirmed back in August, but it won’t actually arrive until spring 2025.

So what are you waiting for? Was six months not enough time for the PS5 version to perform well enough? Or was this decision purely a business one – that in the run-up to Christmas it would be an advantage to keep Indy away from the Xbox’s main console competitors?

In his conversation with Variety, Booty began by repeating a line we’ve heard previously from Xbox head Phil Spencer: launching each game on a PlayStation or Nintendo console is an individual decision.

“We make decisions (about exclusivity and windows) on a game-by-game basis,” Booty said. “And each of our studios is in a slightly different position.”

As for Indiana Jones, Booty suggested that the extra time spent on the PS5 version’s launch was designed to make its initial release on Xbox a “great experience.”

“The game also has a production schedule, so the timing decisions are made first,” Booty continued. “We want our players on Xbox to have a great experience, and then the gap between them (when it becomes available on PlayStation) will be as much a production decision as anything else.”

However, Booty finished by noting that Indiana Jones was “a game that was in production even before we acquired Bethesda,” which is an interesting point worth bringing up. Wasn’t it being developed for PS5 back then?

Back in 2023, Microsoft said it had “not withdrawn any games from PlayStation” following a row over comments by Redfall game designer Harvey Smith, who said Microsoft’s stance on Redfall development was that after its takeover there would be “no PlayStation 5 ”

Of course, this was in an era before Xbox multi-platform publishing had become as much of a thing – a position that only changed earlier this year when Sea of ​​Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment appeared on Nintendo and Sony platforms.

So, which Xbox franchise will join PlayStation next?

“Smart, funny and very Indiana Jones-esque, The Great Circle is a stealth action game that heralds a bold new era for MachineGames,” our Catherine wrote in Eurogamer’s review of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.