Exclusive games haven't been plentiful for Xbox platforms since the launch of the Xbox Series X this past holiday season. The pandemic certainly hit Xbox Game Studios hard, but Xbox has plenty on the horizon. One game that did exclusively release, Bloober Team's horror game The Medium, was originally for PC and Xbox Series X/S earlier this year, but a new ESRB rating reveals that it could be coming to PS5 soon.
As reported by Gematsu, The Medium has now received an official rating from the USA's ESRB rating board for the PlayStation 5. The rating was previously listed solely for the Xbox Series consoles, but now lists PS5 alongside Xbox's next-gen platform. Nothing else about the ESRB's rating has changed. It's still rated M for Mature and warns of first-person violence, bloodstains, and curse words. In other words, there's every reason to believe this a reliable leak.
For the time being, The Medium remains listed on Xbox's official website as an "Xbox Console Exclusive." If The Medium's release on PS5 is coming up, a "surprise: announcement is probably coming up. Obviously, with the Summer Game Fest and E3 2021 coming up, there's plenty of opportunities. But depending on Bloober Team's contract, it could mean weeks or months before the PS5 port is able to be legally announced.
That The Medium is coming to another platform isn't a complete surprise. When the game's platforms were first announced, as far back as June 2020, it was reported that The Medium was simply a timed launch exclusive for Xbox Series X/S. Once the timed-exclusivity window ended, The Medium would be free to come to other platforms. It just wasn't made clear whether that exclusivity would last six months, twelve months, or another irregular interval.
If The Medium is on a six-month exclusivity contract with Xbox, then that contract would end July 28. If it's on a twelve-month contract, it won't come to PS5 until January 2022 at the earliest. Given the ESRB rating going live already, the six-month contract seems all the more likely, although none of this is for certain.
Timed exclusives are a normal thing in the video game industry, though. There's perhaps a point to be made about Xbox's lack of exclusives, but the pandemic has led to a new game drought across many platforms. Really, the best take is that this could open up The Medium to a new audience and hopefully help it be even more of a success.
The Medium is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.