One of the most striking developments of 2025 was Halo: Campaign Evolved making its way to PS5. The well-known “mascot” of Xbox is no longer limited to Microsoft consoles and PC. While this may hint at a wider shift in strategy, Gears of War: E-Day still isn’t coming to Sony’s hardware—despite how last year’s second Gears of War remaster already crossed that line. For now, Halo’s PS5 pre-orders look especially strong, and that only adds to the curiosity.
As Push Square points out, pre-orders for Halo Campaign Evolved on the PlayStation Store are shaping up to be extremely encouraging. No exact numbers are provided, but Master Chief has been performing well on the UK store, where the standard edition is currently sitting at the top of the pre-order list (and the premium version is also within the top five). In the US, Halo hasn’t matched those same numbers yet, though its premium edition is positioned at seventh place at the time of writing.
The Unreal Engine 5 remake is also seeing strong results in France, where the more expensive edition leads the digital rankings. In Germany, the pattern is much the same, though in that market it’s Halo’s standard edition that holds the top spot. Even if different regions are leaning more toward Master Chief’s return than others, a clear direction is beginning to show—one that makes you wonder whether a major PS5 launch could eventually push Xbox to rethink its (still hard to understand) approach to major console exclusives.
In fact, Halo: Campaign Evolved’s promotional push appears to be aimed more heavily at PS5 than at Xbox, even though Halo is the Xbox franchise most closely tied to the company’s identity. At the same time, games such as Forza Horizon 5 and Sea of Thieves have already shown that there’s genuine appetite for bringing Xbox IP to Sony platforms—so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
For the moment, Eurogamer’s Dom Peppiatt tried Halo: Campaign Evolved’s hands-on demo expecting to come away unimpressed, but his opinion has changed: “It has revitalized the original game with all the best elements from the subsequent six.”