Phil Spencer talks about future of Bethesda games on PlayStation

The head of Xbox and executive VP of gaming at Microsoft Phil Spencer recently addressed the topic every one has been curious about for the past few weeks, i.e. future of Bethesda games on PlayStation and other platforms.

Spencer recently did an interview with Kotaku where Spencer was asked about the Zenimax deal, Halo Infinite, developer concerns for making games for 2 consoles with different specs(Series X and Series S), and many more topics.

When asked “Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation?” in the interview with Kotaku, Spencer was quick to reply saying “Yes,”

He clarified, “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.” (Source: Kotaku)

Although Spencer says he doesn’t feel the need to ship the games for PlayStation, he is replying specifically with reference to the question asked, about recouping the spent amount on the ZeniMax Media acquisition. He still hasn’t confirmed if Bethesda titles will be multiplatform. With the ZeniMax acquisition Microsoft has the right to decide platforms Bethesda games will be available on. Microsoft will be very strategic about this and will consider releasing games to other platform as an option, but will it release the AAA titles on other platforms? On launch day? It is highly unlikely.

Xbox recently crossed the 15 million mark for it’s subscription based service, the Xbox Game Pass. You can imagine how strong the platform and its service is in terms of sheer player base. If the player base is this strong and newer titles are attracting more players to the platform and the service, does Xbox really have to worry about recouping the spent amount? Yes, because $7.5B is a large amount.

Still, it is highly unlikely that we will see Bethesda titles like Elder Scrolls on any other platform, especially PlayStation.

Back in September, speaking with Bloomberg, Spencer said that they will judge whether to release Bethesda games on other consoles on a case-by-case basis. This means, there’s a chance that Microsoft will keep some of the games multiplatform.

It has been previously confirmed that all Bethesda titles including the upcoming ‘Starfield’ will be coming to Xbox Game Pass subscription service on day 1. Also, Xbox will still honor the timed exclusivity deal between Bethesda and PlayStation for Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo for PS5.

Xbox has become a RPG powerhouse since the acquisition of Bethesda and id Software in the ZeniMax deal. This attracts the RPG fans to the platform.

If you want to play the future Bethesda games, especially RPGs like Elder Scrolls and Fallout the best option for you is buy a Xbox console or the Xbox Game Pass subscription service for PC. Staying on PlayStation is nothing less than taking a risk for fans of Elder Scrolls and other Bethesda titles.

Even if the titles eventually do make their way to PlayStation, there’s still the possibility of the Xbox platform being the first preference for pushing out updates, betas, and DLCs to the games. There’s another possibility that during special sale events like Christmas and Halloween the titles might be discounted or priced substantially lower for Xbox than on PlayStation. And, that all is considering that the titles release for PlayStation, which is still a big if.