New Death Stranding Record Hints At Potential Of PS5 Ports On Xbox

Death Stranding has undoubtedly been a hit ever since it arrived on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S late last year, but unfortunately, there’s no sign of Death Stranding 2 coming to Xbox alongside its PS5 launch on June 26th.

The release of the first game definitely seems to have been beneficial for the sequel though. It’s been pointed out today that 20 million players have tried Death Stranding since its launch, and Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad advised that it had only sold 5 million copies on PS4 initially, so its audience has grown a lot over time.

Daniel Ahmad on social media: Worth noting that the game had sold less than 5m copies prior to the PC, PS+, PS5, Series X|S, Mac releases.

Making the game more accessible has led to 20m+ players experiencing the IP prior to the launch of its sequel that will require players to own a PS5 to play at launch.

Now, obviously this doesn’t tell us exactly how many copies have been sold on Xbox – many of these players will have been on PC and PS5, and don’t forget it’s been on PC Game Pass and PlayStation Plus as well – but what it does show is that making games more accessible can lead to huge benefits when a sequel rolls around.

With Death Stranding 2 on the horizon, there are now over 20 million players who might be considering picking it up on PS5 this June, and some of them definitely will have been playing the first game on Xbox consoles in recent months.

It’s evident that Sony is not keen to follow Xbox’s path in making first-party games available on rival consoles, but could that change at some point? If Xbox achieves huge success with the likes of Halo, Gears, Forza and much more, we may be looking at a future where permanent console exclusives struggle to thrive amidst an ever-changing industry.