Phil Spencer Confirms That Bethesda Exclusives are Coming

It wasn't that long ago that Bethesda was bought out by Microsoft for the tune of 7.5 billion dollars, and the immediate concern of fans was that Microsoft would try to make everything Bethesda produced exclusive to its own platforms — being PC and Xbox. Microsoft did its best to sort of ease those concerns, but that was before the purchase was actually approved by the necessarily government bodies. Now that it has been, Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, is now laying down some hard truths: exclusives are coming, deal with it.

This is the next step in building an industry-leading first party studios team, a commitment we have to our Xbox community. With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players...

...it’s vitally important that Bethesda continues making games the way it always has. We look forward to empowering Bethesda’s creative teams to reach even more players around the world, helping make future Bethesda titles the biggest and most popular games in their history. Xbox and Bethesda have long shared a common vision for the future of gaming. Both as fans and as creators, Bethesda understands the potential of Xbox Game Pass.

To be fair, this isn't exactly news: basically the same thing was said last November, that Microsoft would be saving the juiciest cuts of Bethesda’s products for itself. But now it’s a lot more official, so, it bears repeating, I suppose.

In any case, in many respects this doesn’t change much: Bethesda’s RPG’s, the thing that put them on the map, have always been best on PC, since that’s where all the modding is. All the same, it sucks for people who prefer the PS5, and who don’t also have a gaming PC to split the load.

A narrow group, probably, but a noteworthy one.