Microsoft made a massive move with the acquisition of ZeniMax Media. With it came the purchase of several studios, including the likes of Bethesda. Bethesda had success across multiple platforms, both on console and PC. However, since the acquisition, their next major upcoming release of Starfield will be an Xbox and PC exclusive. That new move has added some extra pressure on the developers as they now have to deliver a game to act more as a console seller. Bethesda developer Todd Howard was recently featured on the Lex Fridman podcast, where Todd spoke about the Xbox acquisition.
During the episode, Lex brought up the purchase, and Todd Howard admitted that the studio was not exactly sure what would come next. While the studio has worked with Xbox for years, there was some relief to see that the culture within Xbox was about gamers. There is a push to ensure the company moves in a direction where the focus is on gamers and their experience with the products Microsoft Xbox delivers. However, there is now pressure for Starfield to be the big game hit on a specific platform.
Todd noted that there wasn’t this pressure to release a game for just one specific console platform. Instead, there’s more than just the studio that the developers have to keep in mind when they launch Starfield. After all, most consoles are typically sold at cost or even below the cost of manufacturing. So the recoup for these purchases actually comes from software like Starfield. Fortunately, the development team does have some extra help to ensure that the game looks and plays incredibly with the limited platform release.
For instance, Todd Howard says that the top engineers over at Xbox are able to come in and lend a hand. This way, the game has as much help as possible for when it’s released into the marketplace. You can catch the entire exchange regarding the Xbox acquisition and the Starfield exclusivity at around the 2:01:00 mark of the video embedded below. Meanwhile, for those of you interested in Starfield, you’ll still have a bit of a wait to endure.
We don’t know just when Starfield will be launching, as the developers have pushed its intended launch of this year to sometime within 2023. But, again, when this game does find its way out into the marketplace, you’ll find it exclusively available on the PC and Xbox Series X/S platforms.