Updated on April 4th, 2023
Starfield: An Xbox Exclusive Game
For the past three years, Microsoft has been on a studio acquisition spree, acquiring Obsidian and Ninja Theory. The largest of all has, excluding Activision Blizzard, been Bethesda, the developer of Fallout, Skyrim, and the impending interstellar role-playing game Starfield.
It was widely believed that Starfield would be released for the upcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S when it was first announced in 2018. The chance of a PlayStation 5 release was instantly diminished by Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda, and it took the two companies until E3 2021 to declare that the game would only be offered on Xbox and PC.
Although the lack of a PlayStation 5 port continues to be a problem, Todd Howard of Bethesda believes that Starfield's exclusivity is only a good thing.
He contends that this is because the team can devote all of their time, effort, and resources on one console format rather than dividing it between two.
Howards maintains that he has no issues with Sony or the PlayStation 5, but that it would have required more resources to make the game playable on the PlayStation 5.
Howard said that the development of Starfield, which will be published next year for Xbox and PC, has benefited from Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda. Howard made these claims in an interview with the Lex Fridman podcast.
As a new duty for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout company, he added that he was feeling pressure to provide a system-selling product.
Shortly after the game's release date was changed from this year to the first half of 2023, Howard unveiled the first Starfield gameplay in a 15-minute presentation at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase in June.
As a result of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda, none of the studio's upcoming games will be available on PlayStation consoles. However, according to Howard, the developer has a history of releasing Xbox-exclusive content dating back to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind from 2002.
A Delay in Release
While several games were postponed beyond 2022 and into 2023, Starfield stands out as the most notable example. The game boldly proclaimed a November 11, 2022 release date as part of its reveal, showing its confidence that it would meet that deadline.
Well, things do happen in the video game industry. Starfield was ultimately postponed till 2023, and a new date has not been determined.
Then there's Bethesda themselves, which isn't exactly known for releasing bug-free games in the first place, as there are always tons of flaws to be found and patched out over time, many of them really silly, throughout Elder Scrolls and Fallout.
We believe that, aside from The Elder Scrolls 6 itself, it would be difficult to find a larger exclusive with more on it on the Xbox slate of past, present, and even future first-party releases than Starfield.
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