The battle between Xbox One and PS4 is a big one, but that doesn’t mean the line can’t be crossed every now and then. With that in mind, what Playstation exclusives would we love to see readily available on Xbox One? Well, these 5 would be great for starters…
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Not one game in the past five years (save Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons) has managed to feel so heartfelt and lovingly crafted. You can bemoan the typical JRPG tropes like the obsession with finding the light and positivity through darkness and despair, or the Pokemon influences stemming from those pesky Familiars. But the Ghibli sheen is unmistakably and majestically realised in this ground-swelling achievement in RPG design and storytelling.
Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch not only needs a contemporary remaster, (which is a rare exception for this writer because the whole fascination has been a hodgepodge of gratifyingly great and distressingly dismal) but should find a home on Xbox because there would be nothing else like it on the system. Xbox does not need to be a console overrun with characters who wear metallic suits and shoot aliens, it’s time for Xbox to pare back its idiosyncrasies and let the modest adventures take hold. Xbox’s propensity for system sellers is reasonable enough, but now is the best time to let experimental adventures in to flood Microsoft’s behemoth console.
Horizon: Zero Dawn
In 2017 there was no better tag team on PS4 than the killer combination of Horizon: Zero Dawn and Persona 5. Horizon: Zero Dawn has been heralded as the prettiest PS4 game yet seen, and it looks truly astonishing even on a regular PS4 rig. On Xbox One and especially on Xbox One X, the visual bliss will be an orgasmic pleasure, and the sumptuous scenic vistas can only be a breath of fresh air – the kind you will never experience downing a tube of polos and a glass of Tropicana in succession.
The Xbox One has got the potential to stun gamers with rip-roaring, bombastic and sensationally sublime visuals because the processing power is more than up to the task, so it’s easy to see how Horizon can snugly slot into this picture – and it would shine brighter than the prettiest of Xbox One games because of the sharp blue skies and towering robot dinosaurs – heck the swaying grass dances gleefully in the sunlight as well, so there’s no shortage of bliss to uncover were Horizon granted a release on Xbox One.
Persona 5
Persona 4: Arena is available to play on the Xbox 360, so why in the red ring of death is Persona 5 left out of the equation on Xbox One? Only Atlus knows the truth, but the fifth entry in the prominently ascending Persona series deserves a larger audience than the confinement it’s reduced to as a PS4 exclusive.
Persona 5 immediately makes an impression with its bold art style, super-slick menus, and an unforgettable, catchy and meretricious soundtrack. Persona 5 throws a plateful of personality your way for you to lap up and crave for afters, and would be a sleek addition to the Xbox One library in the same way Phil Spencer would be if he showed up as an exclusive character in a Gears of War pre-order bundle.
Persona 5 is without a doubt one of the coolest games of this generation or any other. The swagger it possesses is impregnable and it’s an RPG everyone should be able to play, which is all the more reason that it should be welcomed with a certified huggie by the Xbox community. Taking cues from Carl Jung’s psychology and fusing together high school setting and the seeding underbelly of a metaverse accessed through a mobile phone app, the litany of uncanny ways Persona 5 surprises players and its super swish turn-based RPG combat ensures players can fully bask in all the blissful glossiness Persona 5 effortlessly exudes.
Shadow of the Colossus
Back in 2005, amidst triple A juggernauts and the release of the fabulous Xbox 360, there released a modest, strikingly idyllic, resonantly absorbing adventure title called Shadow of the Colossus, a sorrowful tale of a man who must slay sixteen colossi for the purposes of reviving his deceased lass. Sleeping Beauty may come to mind at first, but our protagonist toils and tirelessly battles to collapse these diverse grassy giants by perilously and awkwardly scaling them to find their weak-spots and jamming the tip of a sword into their flesh, resulting in an uncontrollable spray of darkened viscous blood and the felling of another mighty foe.
It’s very unlikely we’ll see Shadow of the Colossus on Microsoft’s console, but were the Xbox treated to such a lugubrious delight, the Xbox One’s library would automatically feel richer. The Xbox One X is particularly suited to this monolith because the processing power is astronomical enough to cause a blackout, a wiping out of electricity and could cause one’s eyeballs to squelch like cracked eggshells splatted against a brick wall-hyperbole aside though, it’ll look like a true masterpiece on Xbox One X. If Sony’s PS4 Pro can pull it off without a blip, then the Xbox One X will effortlessly follow suit and then some.
Yakuza
There is nothing like a criminally under-appreciated beat-em-up series to get the pulse bleating and the fists clenching.
The Yakuza series has found a snug haven tucked up in SONY land, but it’s time Yakuza hamfisted its way onto consoles while stepping over Far Cry’s short-sighted spectacles – because while Yakuza games maybe small, the content never fails to surprise, delight and on occasion creep us out or make our bodies shudder during guilty pleasure moments. It beats the hell out of the regurgitated yet huge open worlds Ubisoft splurge out, but hey Japanese developers aren’t trying to ape Hollywood tropes and hammer them into the ground until they’re permanently buried into the open world scenery like bodily boils on the skin.
Xbox needs Yakuza. Not only to give the series more notoriety legroom, but to signal all Xbox players to play a proper open world videogame. How can Sony be hogging the spotlight alone with this sensational series? The solution to resolve the absence of Yakuza on Xbox is easy given the chance, pack them in together as a bundle, sell them separately, fuse them all together and freeze dry them, blend and microwave them until they collectively emit fumes that swerve right into your nostrils-yes a couple of these statements are nonsensical jabber, but this is Yakuza’s beautiful essence – so Xbox desperately needs to sample this series out because there’s nothing quite like it.
So what do you think? Have I missed anything out? Would love to hear what you’d like to see by posting in the comments below.
