Xbox Insider Comments on Hellblade 2 PS5 Port Rumors

10.03.2024 - 19:24 / gamerant.com / Phil Spencer / Sarah Bond / Matt Booty / Ninja Theory / Dominik Bo

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is not coming to the PlayStation 5, a well-known Xbox insider has said. The claim was offered in response to a newly emerged rumor that Ninja Theory is already working on a Hellblade 2 PS5 port.

This February saw a sizable influx of reports claiming a wide variety of Xbox console exclusives are going multi-platform. Following weeks of rumors, Microsoft finally responded to the drama with a special episode of the Official Xbox Podcast on February 15. Over the course of 22 minutes, executives Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty jointly confirmed that four Xbox games are indeed coming to other platforms. While they didn't name any specific titles on that occasion, those games were subsequently confirmed to be Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded.

This turn of events fueled additional speculation that even more first-party Xbox titles could be coming to other platforms in the future. One such claim emerged during the latest, March 9 episode of the Xbox Infinite Podcast, in which host Riskit4TheBiskit stated that Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is coming to the PS5, citing «four separate sources.» Microsoft insider Jez Corden has promptly dismissed this rumor, describing it as «completely false» in a March 10 tweet. The move arrived mere days after Corden also shot down the notion of Starfield coming to the PS5 in the near future.

The notion of a Hellblade 2 PS5 port not being part of Ninja Theory's current agenda makes more sense than it doesn't; while Microsoft has indeed decided to begin bringing some of its console exclusives to its rivals' systems, the four titles that are part of its initial multi-platform push are all either older games, non-AAA projects, or both.

In contrast, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 won't even be out on Xbox hardware and PC until late May, and is widely touted as one of Microsoft's biggest console exclusives of 2024. This makes it inherently different from the likes of Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, which Spencer previously described as games that have already maximized their audience outreach in Microsoft's gaming ecosystem, citing that as one of the main reasons why their ports are happening in the first place.

Riskit4TheBiskit wasn't the first person to claim that Ninja Theory's next title would reach Sony's latest console. Nick Baker of The XboxEra Podcast made a similar suggestion back in early February, stating that a PS5 port of Hellblade 2 will «probably» happen. And while Baker's track record with industry scoops has more hits than misses, he also claimed Starfield was already in the works for PlayStation as part of the same report, which some other leakers like Corden have subsequently refuted. Naturally, with Microsoft now clearly