Xbox doesn’t need to put Bethesda games on other consoles says Phil Spencer

Just weeks ago, Microsoft made a bombshell announcement: They acquired Bethesda. This gives them access to Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, and many other massive IPs. While Xbox has had a much friendlier approach to how they distribute their games, many wondered if The Elder Scrolls 6 will be an Xbox exclusive.

While Xbox hasn’t given a definitive answer, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer noted that they could do it and it won’t hurt them at all. Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Zenimax has made many wonder if they’ll need PlayStation in order to recoup their investment. In an interview with Kotaku, Spencer was quick to say that they absolutely can

“Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation?” asked Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo.

“Yes,” Spencer quickly replied. Then he paused.

“I don’t want to be flip about that,” Spencer added. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games.”

“When I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”

Phil Spencer previously noted that they’ll be evaluating Bethesda exclusivity on a case by case basis. This means it’s totally possible that the next Fallout or Elder Scrolls is on PlayStation. Xbox will still honor pre-existing exclusivity deals such as Deathloop for PS5.

Xbox’s next-gen console, Xbox Series X, releases on November 10th, 2020. The Elder Scrolls 6 will release as a next-gen game sometime in the future.