Xbox’s “reset” under new CEO Asha Sharma includes doubling down on key franchises and leaning back into a certain number of annual console exclusives. The gaming executive shocked everyone by confirming Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution would not come to PlayStation 5 like Xbox’s other recent blockbusters had. As the strategy around exclusives evolves, could The Elder Scrolls VI or Fallout 5 end up skipping PlayStation hardware (PS5 or PS6) as well?
That question was put to Bethesda’s Todd Howard by Windows Central. Howard reportedly responded by saying it’s too early to comment on what platforms the games will be on. One way to take that is that, with both games potentially still years away, Bethesda isn’t ready yet to confirm hardware details. Another way to interpret it, in the context of some pretty rapid shifts at Xbox under Asha Sharma, is that the possibility of console exclusivity is back on the table.
If TES 6 or Fallout 5 did end up being an Xbox exclusive, it would be a return to Microsoft’s earlier content strategy after acquiring Bethesda. It made Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle into Xbox and PC-only games. After all, why would you spend $7.5 billion on an acquisition of some of the most beloved franchises in gaming if not to leverage them to strengthen your own gaming platform?
Kotaku asked Phil Spencer back in 2020 whether he could afford to not release TES 6 on PS5. “Yes,” he replied. Here was the rest of his answer:
I don’t want to be flip about that. This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. 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. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—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. Whatever that means.
While Microsoft never officially confirmed plans to make TES 6 exclusive, it did tell the FTC during the 2023 hearings over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard that the single-player RPG “may be released only on Xbox and PC.”
Of course, we all know what happened next. Starfield came out as a console exclusive in September 2023 and failed to meaningfully shift momentum for Xbox. Hardware sales continued to decline, Game Pass subscriber numbers missed internal targets, and strict profit margin goals of 30 percent led Xbox to begin releasing its games on rival platforms beginning in early 2024. That policy shift culminates this year with the arrival of Starfield, Halo: Campaign Evolved, and Forza Horizon 6 on PS5. How much of that is Sharma prepared to walk back as she lays off 3,600 employees to focus resources on blockbuster franchises?
According to industry veterans like ex-PlayStation executive Shawn Layden, a middle-of-the-road third-way strategy isn’t feasible. “Those two roads do not converge,” he recently said. “To be a platform and to be a very well-supported, well-accepted, well-selling platform, you need exclusive content.” Layden added, “If you’re going to be the biggest publisher in the world, which is not a bad ambition—I’m sure there’s gold on them there hills—you have to bring your stuff on every platform. Multi-platform is almost a prerequisite.”
