Bethesda has given fans a look at its upcoming roadmap of games, as well as commented on the possible exclusivity of both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5. In wide swathes, Bethesda is full steam ahead on The Elder Scrolls 6, plans to continue supporting Starfield, and has multiple Fallout projects in the works, beyond the aforementioned Fallout 5 (which is in pre-production).
Namely, Bethesda has confirmed that Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas remasters are real, that it is working on a new game with Obsidian Entertainment as well, and still even more for the wider IP. It’s all exciting—with the caveat that Bethesda and Obsidian both recently suffered from the Xbox layoffs—but one major question still lingers. With Xbox historically not sticking to any specific exclusivity plans over the past few years, will The Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5 be exclusive to Xbox consoles?
Windows Central’s Jez Corden put the question to Bethesda head Todd Howard in a recent interview, and the question is a good one. On the one hand, Xbox’s prior exclusive strategy was said to be a case-by-case basis, and that strategy quickly became every game it could quickly put onto PS5. Halo: Campaigned Evolved‘s PS5 release for July is just proof of that strategy. Under new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, there seems to be a renewed push for exclusivity and for producing more exclusive games (partially why there are so many Fallout games in the works). It’s unconfirmed that Gears of War: E-Day was pulled from PS5 days, if not hours, before its intended announcement, but it seems likely. And so, whatever the new or future strategy is, it becomes a question of whether or not Fallout 5/The Elder Scrolls 6 will ever appear on a PS5 console.
Scratch & Peek
Identify the cover art while scratching off as little foil as
possible.
And Howard refuses to answer. When Corden asked about Xbox exclusivity for the games, his answer was “too early to comment.” And while, in all likelihood, he means that both Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6 are too early in development to comment on platforms, a second reading also qualifies. It could be too early to know whether Xbox intends for these games to be exclusives or not, although fans have been waiting for years for answers on this. Consumer confidence would be much higher, arguably, if they knew what platform they’d need to play Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6 on.
After all, it’s those big, big numbers that Sharma herself is bringing attention to. Following Bethesda’s Starfield/Fallout/Elder Scrolls announcement, she tweeted that Skyrim has sold 65 million units and Fallout 4 has sold 35 million units. No doubt, those are strong numbers, but contextually, fans would have known that these games would be available on most platforms well ahead of launch—just like many fans have known that GTA 6 would skip PC at least for several months when it launched.
This intuitive understanding of releases and platforms is shared among most gamers, and it’s a facet of the industry that is entirely in the air under Xbox’s exclusivity strategy until it fully and finally commits one way or another.
- Released
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2026
- ESRB
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m
- Developer(s)
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Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher(s)
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Bethesda Softworks
