Ever since the news broke that Microsoft will be acquiring Bethesda parent company ZeniMax, more than a few questions have been asked about what the future will look like for Bethesda’s future releases as far as their exclusivity is concerned. Technically, the acquisition hasn’t gone through yet, so Microsoft won’t be talking about the specifics until that happens, but Bethesda definitely wants to want to make games for people across devices.
Speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the same, suggesting that for Bethesda, accessibility and making games for players regardless of where they’re playing is a priority.
“We felt very strongly about their view of access; games for everybody that we can bring to anybody regardless of where they are, what devices they’re playing on,” Howard said, “We’re very, very passionate about that, and at the end of the day we’re convinced we’ll make better products and get them to more people easily by being part of Xbox as opposed to being just a third party.”
Of course, with Microsoft’s support for both Xbox and PC and now their commitment to mobile devices with cloud streaming, Microsoft is already reaching a large number of audiences across devices, which is what Howard is referring to here- whether or not the same will happen across consoles remains to be seen.
For what it’s worth, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that future Bethesda games’ exclusivity will be decided on a case-by-case basis, but that Microsoft doesn’t need to release anything on competing platforms in order to make good on the investment into this acquisition.