It's not the first time that something like this has happened, and it certainly will not be the last. As you probably already know, Microsoft recently bought ZeniMax Media, one of whose subsidiaries is none other than Bethesda Softworks.
This news was received in a rather mixed way by the players because the future of some licenses could well be compromised on certain consoles. As everyone knows, Xbox is a product from Microsoft, and Bethesda has developed cult licenses like The Elder Scrolls, including Skyrim, but also Fallout. The question obviously arises as to whether these licenses will now be exclusive to Xbox.
We already know that for the upcoming games Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, which were to be temporarily excluded from a release on PlayStation, nothing will change but what will happen next?, and in particular, what about The Elder Scrolls VI? Well, Phil Spencer spoke on Kotaku's microphone in an interview, and here's what he said:
Kotaku: Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation
Phil Spencer: Yes. 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. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—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.
This last sentence does not bode well for Playstation players, and far from clarifying things, it generates more doubts. In any case, we should not be surprised to see the next installments of certain licenses become to become Xbox exclusive, starting with The Elder Scrolls VI about which we are still waiting for some news.
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