The Elder Scrolls 6’s Xbox Exclusivity is “Not About Punishing Any Other Platform” – Phil Spencer

It would have been impossible to imagine a multiplatform franchise as massive and successful as The Elder Scrolls to become exclusive to any one platform in today’s day and age, to the extent that even after Microsoft finished the acquisition of Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax, there were many who held out hope that the likes of The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and the upcoming Starfield were just too big to drop their PlayStation support.

Microsoft has, of course, made it abundantly clear since then that the primary purpose of the Bethesda acquisition is to make exclusive content for Xbox Game Pass that can attract more people to the service, and in a recent interview with GQ, Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke more about that.

When prompted about The Elder Scrolls 6 and its exclusivity for Xbox and PC, Spencer said that that decision wasn’t about “punishing other platforms”, but instead more inwardly-focused on strengthening Xbox itself.

“It’s not about punishing any other platform, like I fundamentally believe all of the platforms can continue to grow,” Spencer said. “But in order to be on Xbox, I want us to be able to bring the full complete package of what we have. And that would be true when I think about Elder Scrolls 6. That would be true when I think about any of our franchises.”

Of course, it’s still going to be quite some time before The Elder Scrolls 6 comes anywhere close to approaching its launch. Bethesda remains fully focused on Starfield for now, and only after its November 2022 launch will the studio move on to its next project. Earlier this year, director Todd Howard confirmed that The Elder Scrolls 6 was still in a “design phase”, which gives a pretty clear idea of how early in production the project actually is right now.