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Phil Spencer: We don't need to launch Bethesda games on Playstation to make money

The Xbox boss hinted to how they plan on making the ZeniMax deal work for them.

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The first thing most people wondered when it was revealed that Microsoft was buying up ZeniMax (including Bethesda, Id Software and more), seems to have been if this means all future Fallout games, the upcoming Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI would be PC- and Xbox-exclusives. Some people have landed in the conclusion that it would be bad business for Microsoft not to do it, even though the same argument would be valid for all exclusives for all formats.

In a interview with Kotaku, the Xbox boss, Phil Spencer was asked the question if they will be able to recoup the $7.5 billion they paid for ZeniMax, without releasing Elder Scrolls for PlayStation. He replied:

"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."

Spencer has previously said they will handle the Bethesda titles by a case-by-case basis, but Spencer's comment shows they have been calculating on the economy of keeping all or most games exclusive for their platforms. We already know that The Elder Scrolls Online, which is available for PlayStation 4, will continue to be fleshed out for Sony's console in the future. But if Microsoft will take the same stance for any future ZeniMax franchises, that remains to be seen.

How do you think Microsoft will deal with this?

The Elder Scrolls VI

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