PlayStation fans will still have to buy a PC or Xbox. Microsoft bought Bethesda precisely to create exclusives

We learned from the Xbox blog the other day that Microsoft will definitely make some of Bethesda’s upcoming games Xbox and PC exclusives. Prior to this, statements on this matter were vague.

Now, the head of the Xbox, Phil Spencer (Phil Spencer) in another interview, inclined to a more extended comment. And PlayStation owners who only play on their own consoles will hardly like Spencer’s statement.

I’ll try to be as clear as possible because I think it’s fair. Obviously, I can’t sit here and say that every Bethesda game is exclusive, because we know that’s not true. There are contractual obligations that we are going to fulfill, as we always do in each of these cases. We have games that exist on other platforms and we are going to support those games on the platforms they are installed on. There are communities of players. We love these communities and will continue to invest in them. And even in the future, there may be things that either have contractual obligations or inherit multi-platform functionality.

But, if you are an Xbox customer, I want you to know that this is about bringing you great exclusive games that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists, and that is our goal. This is why we do it. This is the root of this partnership that we are building, and the creative opportunities we can bring to the marketplace for our Xbox customers will be the best ever after we finish here.

So, Spencer’s new answer is significantly different from what we heard immediately after the announcement of the deal, when he said that the company has no goal of taking games away from gamers on other platforms. Now we see that this was about the main goal. Yes, the head of the Xbox left himself room for maneuver and did not clarify the situation 100%, but he could not have done it. In the end, so far everything looks like at least a lot of future Bethesda games will become exclusives, if not most of them. Let’s clarify: exclusive PC and Xbox, as well as the Game Pass service, which is present both there and there. That is, the games simply will not be released on the PlayStation and Nintendo.

Given that Bethesda Softworks owns such super-popular franchises, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, as well as Starfield, DOOM, Quake, Dishonored, Prey, Wolfenstein and many others, it looks like a deal alone could bring back the glorious times of the true Sony-Microsoft standoff. based on exclusives. However, in the case of the second company, exclusives will also be released on PCs, so the situation is still somewhat different.

Thus, in the future, PlayStation fans who are accustomed to playing only on Sony consoles will not hurt to acquire either a PC or a competitor’s console. Considering that all new Bethesda games will be released immediately on Game Pass, it will be possible to play them with minimal financial costs.