Bethesda Boss Says It's 'Hard to Imagine' Elder Scrolls 6 Being Xbox-Exclusive

Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard has said it's "hard to imagine" The Elder Scrolls 6 as a fully Xbox-exclusive game in a new interview that touches on many aspects of ZeniMax's acquisition by Microsoft. In the interview, GamesIndustry's James Batchelor posed the idea that seeing The Elder Scrolls 6 as exclusive was hard to imagine, particularly as The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim owes some of its huge success to the sheer number of consoles it launched on. Howard replied by saying, "I would agree that is hard to imagine," but would say no more on the subject. The subject of Bethesda's games becoming Xbox exclusives has been a talking point since the moment we learned Xbox had agreed to acquire parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion. On Microsoft's part, here are good cases for both sides, and Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has previously said any decisions about exclusivity would be made on a "case-by-case basis". Howard backed up that case-by-case approach in the new interview, although he says that the early stage of the acquisition (it won't complete until 2021 at the earliest) means that, "We haven't gone through all of that, to be honest." Howard also makes clear that, for Bethesda Game Studios, every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind has partnered with Microsoft to some extent, so any exclusivity deals that do emerge aren't a huge change in and of themselves: "I can't really project where things will be except to say we've done those sort of exercises ourselves as an independent. If you look at every Elder Scrolls game, there has been some exclusivity on Xbox or with Microsoft. We've partnered with every game. Morrowind was basically a console exclusive, Oblivion was a long timed exclusive, Skyrim's DLC was exclusive for a long period of time. We'll decide what makes the best sense for our audience when the time comes, and I can't really project today what that looks like." Developing...

source https://www.ign.com/articles/bethesda-boss-says-its-hard-to-imagine-elder-scrolls-6-being-xbox-exclusive