Xbox Head Phil Spencer Maintains Bethesda Deal Won’t Necessarily Keep Games Off Of Other Consoles
Following Microsoft’s move to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Game Studios, id Software and Arkane Studios, there was concern that Bethesda’s popular intellectual properties could become Xbox console exclusives going forward. However, Xbox head Phil Spencer maintained in an interview published on Thursday that the purchase wasn’t made in an effort to take titles away from gamers who play on other consoles.
In speaking with Kotaku‘s Stephen Totilo, Spencer indicated that the opposite was true and that the aim of his team is to allow more players and not less able to enjoy gaming releases.
“This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that,” he said. “Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games.”
There is some level of precedent for Microsoft acquiring a gaming studio in possession of a popular property and still allowing its releases to appear on outside platforms. Totilo specifically mentioned the 2014 acquisition of Mojang Studios, the developer of Minecraft, and the subsequent decision to continue releasing its games on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and other devices.
However, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Gaming bookended those remarks by asserting that they wouldn’t actually need to release future games on additional consoles in order to recoup his employer’s massive investment in the development houses responsible for iconic series like Doom, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein and Dishonored.
“When I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us.”
As relayed last month by The Inquisitr, Microsoft acquired Bethesda’s parent company for the sum of $7.5 billion. In a blog post confirming the purchase, the Xbox division positioned the move as part of an effort to connect gamers. Specifically, the company reaffirmed its desire to delve deeper into a player-centric era of user integration with software releases. It was further asserted that the ZeniMax purchase will allow consumers more freedom to use multiple platforms and devices.
Over the course of his Kotaku interview, Spencer touched on a number of other topics, including the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, which are currently slated for release on November 10, along with the development status of Halo Infinite and the issue of console storage volume amid ballooning file sizes.
