In the interview, GamesIndustry‘s James Batchelor posed the idea that seeing The Elder Scrolls 6 as exclusive was hard to imagine, particularly as The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim owes some of its huge success to the sheer number of consoles it launched on. Howard replied by saying, “I would agree that is hard to imagine,” but would say no more on the subject.
The subject of Bethesda’s games becoming Xbox exclusives has been a talking point since the moment we learned Xbox had agreed to acquire parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion. On Microsoft’s part, here are good cases for both sides, and Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has previously said any decisions about exclusivity would be made on a “case-by-case basis”.
Howard backed up that case-by-case approach in the new interview, although he says that the early stage of the acquisition (it won’t complete until 2021 at the earliest) means that, “We haven’t gone through all of that, to be honest.” This follows Phil Spencer’s comments earlier this week, where he explained that it would be illegal for him to be making decisions for Bethesda until the acquisition is complete, meaning planning hasn’t truly begun.
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Howard also makes clear that every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind has partnered with Microsoft to some extent, so any exclusivity deals that do emerge aren’t a huge change in and of themselves: “I can’t really project where things will be except to say we’ve done those sort of exercises ourselves as an independent.
“If you look at every Elder Scrolls game, there has been some exclusivity on Xbox or with Microsoft. We’ve partnered with every game. Morrowind was basically a console exclusive, Oblivion was a long timed exclusive, Skyrim’s DLC was exclusive for a long period of time. We’ll decide what makes the best sense for our audience when the time comes, and I can’t really project today what that looks like.”
As we’ve heard previously, Howard confirms that Bethesda is “giving up very little” of its independence by joining Microsoft, and says, “We’re a subsidiary, but we’re still running our games and pushing everything the way that we have.” The implication is that, while Microsoft will naturally have some say on decisions around Bethesda games, Bethesda itself will also have a major part in that process.
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Speaking more generally, Howard explained that he hadn’t anticipated how huge a news story the acquisition would become, because he’d been “in the weeds” while organising it: “I grossly underestimated the impact in the larger gaming community,” he says. “I was naively surprised at how big it landed and what it meant in the larger context of games, but I was happy with the feedback we saw. A lot of people saw it as a big positive thing, the same way we do.”
It’s well worth reading GamesIndustry’s interview in full, which contains Howard’s thoughts on the benefits of Game Pass (and how it could help reignite certain genres of games), and the effect of streaming on the industry.
For more, you can read the five biggest takeaways from Xbox’s Bethesda acquisition, or check out our Xbox Series X guide. And, if you’re still trying to secure an Xbox Series X or S before next month’s launch, keep an eye on our Xbox preorder page for up-to-date retail links.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
