Phil Spencer says Xbox doesn't have to ship Bethesda games on other platforms

Xbox head and executive vice president of gaming at Microsoft Phil Spencer talked about Microsoft's next-gen strategy, its upcoming consoles and the acquisition of ZeniMax Media in an interview with Kotaku. When directly asked whether Microsoft could recoup its $7.5 billion investment without shipping The Elder Scrolls VI on PS5, Spencer responded "Yes."

He then provided a little more clarity while saying he didn't want to be flippant.

""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 timed PS5 exclusives Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo are being honored as pre-existing deals, it seems more and more than if gamers will want to play new Bethesda games, they'll need to invest in the Xbox ecosystem to some extent.

Microsoft previously confirmed that all new Bethesda titles, including big upcoming games like Starfield, will launch day and date into Xbox Game Pass, while the existing library is also being added.

With the addition of Bethesda Softworks to the existing Xbox Game Studios family, a move that has been described as being based on relationships, there are now 23 first-party Xbox studios. Regardless of what happens with other platforms, it's clear players on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S can look forward to a steady stream of games over the next generation.