As part of their efforts to get their proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard approved by regulators, Microsoft has been facing off with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in court the past couple days. The FTC wants to impose an injunction that would prevent Microsoft and Activision from closing the deal before a more crucial trial in August that would determine if the FTC has an antitrust case.
Yesterday, court documents provided some juicy tidbits, including that future Bethesda games may come to PlayStation consoles, and an admission from Microsoft itself that Xbox has lost the console wars. Today, Xbox boss Phil Spencer took the stand, and he’s had a lot of things to say, with the subject of Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda being a particular bone of contention.
When asked if The Elder Scrolls VI will be an Xbox exclusive, Spencer said that hasn’t yet been nailed down.
“I think we’ve been a little unclear on what platforms it’s launching on, given how far out the game is. It’s difficult for us right now to nail down… It’s so far out it’s hard to understand what the platforms will even be at this point.”
An interesting response, given Spencer previously seemed to indicate The Elder Scrolls VI would indeed be an Xbox exclusive. When pressed, Spencer somewhat clarified “when I said it I believed it was [true],” but that he doesn’t really recall making the statement. Of course, there’s a good chance Spencer’s position on TeS6 exclusivity has changed as this Activision Blizzard legal battle has played out.
Speaking of Bethesda exclusives, Spencer also provided some interesting color on why they decided to purchase Bethesda. It seems locking down Starfield was a big concern…
“When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire… to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox. So, the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business.”
I’m sure even more juicy details will come out of Microsoft and the FTC’s legal wrangling, and we here at Wccftech will keep you updated on the latest.
