According to GameSpot, Jorg Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, revealed he pitched bringing the sim to PlayStation consoles about two and a half years ago and was initially rejected. The idea was revived when Sony proactively reached out, leading to the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on PS4 and PS5 on December 8. Neumann believes this specific conversation “kicked off a whole avalanche” of Xbox titles coming to PlayStation, even though Flight Sim wasn’t the first to make the jump. That avalanche included 2025 releases like Grounded, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 5 on PS5, with Halo: Campaign Evolved set for a day-one PS5 launch in 2026. The new 2024 version of the game also required a technical overhaul, shrinking the core install size from a potential 1 TB down to just 8 GB by offloading everything else to the cloud.
The pitch that changed everything
Here’s the thing about corporate strategy: it often starts with one person having a seemingly wild idea. In this case, it was Jorg Neumann looking at the massive, 300 GB (and growing) install of the 2020 Flight Sim and thinking about how to get it onto other boxes. So he pitched PlayStation. And got a “no.” That’s not surprising, really. For years, the console war mentality was deeply ingrained. Why would you give your flagship simulator to the competition?
But the world changed. The PS5 outsold the Xbox Series X|S by a huge margin. The old model of selling consoles to sell games was looking… less solid. Then, a Sony exec who loved flight sims reached out. That external nudge was apparently all it took to flip the internal switch at Microsoft. Suddenly, the “no” became a “yes,” and not just for one game. It opened the floodgates. Look at the lineup now—Sea of Thieves, Forza, even Halo. That’s a fundamental shift. It makes you wonder, was Flight Sim the catalyst, or was it just the first domino to fall in a plan that was already being considered?
The cloud saved the port
Technically, this move couldn’t have happened without a major architectural change. The previous game was a behemoth. Neumann said the planned content could have ballooned it to 1 terabyte. A terabyte! On a console with a 1 TB SSD, that’s basically the entire drive for one game. It’s untenable.
So the team for Flight Simulator 2024 made a crucial pivot. They stripped the core install down to a lean 8 GB. Everything else—the petabytes of satellite imagery, the detailed 3D cities, the terrain data—gets streamed on-demand from the cloud. This isn’t just a compression trick; it’s a fundamental rethinking of the game’s delivery. It had to work this way for the PlayStation port to be feasible. No one’s going to dedicate half their console storage to one simulator. This cloud-heavy approach is probably the future for these massive, data-intensive experiences. But it also introduces a dependency. Your experience is now tied to the quality and speed of your internet connection. It’s a trade-off, but clearly one Microsoft was willing to make to reach a much larger audience.
Meeting players where they are
Microsoft’s official line, as stated in their business update, is that they want to “meet players where they are.” That’s corporate speak for a simple truth: there are way more players on PlayStation and Switch. Ignoring them is leaving money on the table. This isn’t about charity or being nice; it’s a hard-nosed business calculation. When your competitor’s platform has an install base tens of millions larger, you go to where the customers are.
And let’s be real, the definition of “Xbox” is changing. It’s less about the plastic box under your TV and more about the ecosystem—Game Pass, your library, your friends list. If they can get you buying *Halo* on your PS5, you’re still in *their* ecosystem. You might still subscribe to Game Pass on your PC or cloud. The walled garden isn’t being torn down, but the walls are getting a lot more doors. For gamers, it’s mostly good news. More choice, fewer reasons to feel locked into one platform. But it does mark the end of an era where exclusive games were the primary weapons in the console war. The battle has moved elsewhere.
