Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda parent company Zenimax has gone through, as expected, and both companies today clarified what that’ll mean for gamers. It seems that at some point in the future, some of Bethesda’s titles will be available on only Xbox and PC. As for which games, that’s apparently left for us to speculate.
European officials approved the $7.5 billion acquisition earlier this week. Directly afterward, Xbox head Phil Spencer posted on Xbox Wire welcoming the company into the fold. When speaking about the Xbox community, he added, “With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players.”
Do we know yet which games will be exclusive? Not yet, though we know enough about what Bethesda is up to to make a few educated guesses. After Skyrim papered the walls of the developer’s studio with money, I’m going to guess they’ll do everything they can to make sure Elder Scrolls 6 onto all of the platforms in the world. A new IP like Starfield is a more likely candidate — it doesn’t already have a dedicated community on PlayStation or Nintendo that’ll be affected by exclusivity.
Spencer also implied that some of the motivation of Bethesda’s exclusivity is to help boost the value of Game Pass. “Xbox and Bethesda have long shared a common vision for the future of gaming. Both as fans and as creators, Bethesda understands the potential of Xbox Game Pass.” Most likely, future Bethesda games will arrive on Game Pass when they launch, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Still, Spencer added, “it’s vitally important that Bethesda continues making games the way it always has,” which hopefully means they can still publish some of their games on other platforms.
Source: Xbox Wire
