Bethesda’s SVP of Global Marketing Pete Hines appeared on the Gamespot Play For All Live 2021 live stream yesterday, where he opened up on the thorny subject of Xbox exclusivity for games like Starfield, Redfall, and presumably The Elder Scrolls VI whenever it comes out. First of all, he echoed the sentiment of Bethesda Game Studios Executive Producer Todd Howard in that the narrower focus will help developers making these titles.
Later on in the chat, he expressed sympathy to those PlayStation fans who may feel left behind because of this newfound Xbox exclusivity and even apologized for it. However, ultimately it’s not his choice.
We’re not making it on that box, so it just needs to run as well as possible on this one and on a PC. Narrow focus always helps, the same is true by the way for a game like Deathloop, when we decided to do a partnership with Sony and that game became exclusive to that platform, that development got more streamlined because we said PS5 and PC, that’s what we’re focusing on.
I think in that way it does free up the developers a little bit in terms of what they’re trying to get the thing to be the best game on when you have fewer of those it’s gonna go a little better.
Indeed, Microsoft obviously wants to capitalize on its big $7.5 billion acquisition, even though this year’s new Bethesda titles (Deathloop, due on September 14th, and Ghostwire: Tokyo if it doesn’t slip into 2022) are both timed exclusives for PlayStation 5 and PC and will only launch on Xbox platforms with a one-year delay.
I don’t know how to allay the fears and concerns of PlayStation 5 fans other than to say I’m a PlayStation 5 player as well and I’ve played games on that console and there’s games I’m going to continue to play on it, but if you want to play Starfield, it’s PC and Xbox, sorry. All I can really say is I apologize, because I’m certain that that’s frustrating to folks but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.
