At the start of this generation, there were rumors that Sony was acting incredibly aggressive, trying to sign console exclusives with as many publishers as possible. Finally, we’ve seen evidence of that, with the likes of Deathloop, Ghostwire Tokyo, and most recently Final Fantasy 16 all launching first on PS5.
And in the ongoing FTC case against Microsoft, as it seeks to temporarily halt the tech giant’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Phil Spencer exec has alleged that one of his company’s motives for buying Bethesda was to prevent Sony from securing console exclusivity on Starfield.
“When we got it [Bethesda’s parent company] Zenimax, one of the reasons behind this, was that Sony made a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo and actually paid Bethesda not to ship those games on Xbox, so the Starfield debate when we heard it was also likely to come to an end. Skipping Xbox means we can’t be in our position as a third-place console where we fall further behind,” He said.
Spencer didn’t bring any receipts, so it’s not clear what kind of information his company was acting on, though since this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this story, we can probably assume Sony really He was In negotiations for console exclusivity for Starfield. Assuming the deal was the same or similar to Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, it would likely be a one-year exclusivity.
Of course, after Microsoft’s $7.5 billion purchase of the publisher, so will the game never on PlayStation at all right now – and none of Bethesda’s other games, like Indiana Jones, will ever be released. We’ll let you decide the lesser of two evils — either way, it’s interesting to hear Redmond’s motivation for the acquisition.
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