Microsoft has been on a studio buying mission for the past three years, bringing Obsidian and Ninja Theory to market. Next to Activision Blizzard, the biggest of them all was Bethesda, the studio behind Fallout, Skyrim, and the upcoming intergalactic RPG Starfield.
Studio head Todd Howard admits he feels “pressure” to turn their sci-fi RPG into a “platform seller” for Microsoft’s Xbox Series X – and frankly, after all these acquisitions, Microsoft’s studios should start delivering attractive exclusives for the console.
“We’ve never been kind of a platform seller in a while, you know ‘the game’ for a platform, and so there’s a lot of pressure [and] a lot of responsibility there to make sure we deliver for everyone,” Howard said in the Lex Fridman podcast (opens in new tab) (through VGC (opens in new tab)).
Adding to the pressure, the deliberately lonely Starfield isn’t launching on Sony consoles, but Todd Howard said “this isn’t abnormal in any way”.
“Keep in mind that for us that exclusivity isn’t unique, even though we’ve done PlayStation stuff, and I think the PS5 is just an insane machine,” Howard said. Adding that the studio mainly produced PC games and only recently focused on the Xbox following Microsoft buys Bethesda for $7.5 billion.
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Exclusivity strikes when a formerly multiplatform studio stops releasing its games for every console, and Nintendo switch and the PS5 are no strangers to exclusivity. This year alone, Sony has released three War god Ragnarok, The last of usand Horizon Forbidden West.
While we’ve reported on Microsoft’s many acquisitions in recent years, the absence of major Xbox Series X|S exclusives and games that showcase what this generation of consoles can do has been conspicuously absent.
With stock shortages preventing anyone from getting their hands on PS5s and Xbox Series X, and with the focus on Game pass by opening up a single library of games to gamers on PC and older Xbox consoles, the lack of new games hasn’t been too much of an issue until recently.
However, a shift has taken place. This Black Friday, while the PS5 was still in short supply, there were plenty of Xbox in stock. Much on the Xbox Series S made it one of the best deals of the long weekend, and now all those new Xbox owners will want something special to justify their purchase.
Will Starfield, with his sandbox world of more than 100 solar systems and spatial combat sequences, be able to deliver?