Starfield – it was going to be exclusive one way or the other (Picture: Bethesda)
The latest revelation from the Xbox vs. FTC court case suggests that Starfield was originally going to be a PS5 exclusive like Deathloop.
Although Microsoft bought Bethesda back in March 2021 it took a long time for any of their new games to make it to Xbox, as Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo were already tied up as PlayStation console exclusives (although neither was very good, especially Ghostwire, so it was no great loss).
Rather than being an odd coincidence Microsoft has suggested that this was actually the catalyst for why they decided to buy Bethesda, because Starfield was set to follow as a PlayStation 5 exclusive.
That’s according to no less than Xbox boss Phil Spencer who was in court today, but once again refused to be drawn on the fact of whether The Elder Scrolls 6 would be Xbox exclusive or not.
Microsoft paid $7.5 billion (£5.9 billion) for ZeniMax, although that’s still peanuts compared to the $68.7 billion it plans to spend on Activision Blizzard – which is what the whole court case is about.
‘When we acquired ZeniMax [the parent company of Bethesda] one of the impetuses for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire… to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox,’ said Spencer.
‘So the discussion about Starfield, when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership, so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business.’
Spencer once again tried to paint Microsoft as a hapless underdog, compared to an aggressive and anti-competitive Sony, repeating the idea that Xbox has lost the console wars by stating that, ‘We try to compete but, as I said, over the last 20 years we’ve failed to do that effectively.’
As for The Elder Scrolls 6, the follow-up to Skyrim, he was almost comically evasive, with The Verge reporting him as saying: ‘I think we’ve been a little unclear on what platforms it’s launching on, given how far out the game is.’
‘It’s difficult for us right now to nail down,’ he added.
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The latest revelation from the Xbox vs. FTC court case suggests that Starfield was originally going to be a PS5 exclusive like Deathloop.