Update: A newly-surfaced court document submitted by Microsoft in the midst of its ongoing court case over a proposed $69 billion USD acquisition of Activision Blizzard seems to have dropped the hammer on the idea of Elder Scrolls 6 exclusivity, very clearly listing out a number of Bethesda IP along with their launch dates, platform availability and a comment from Microsoft about exclusivity.
In the table, which was shared by The Verge, The Elder Scrolls 6 is very clearly labelled as an Xbox and PC title, with the remark on platform availability reading, “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.”
The table also shows the game’s tentative release schedule as TBC but with an expected release in 2026, “or later.”
Original Story: With Starfield’s launch last week marking easily one of the most high-profile Xbox and PC exclusive releases in recent memory, coming from the Microsoft-owned Bethesda Game Studios and already breaking launch records for the studio, it hasn’t taken long at all for attention to turn back to the studio’s next big thing – The Elder Scrolls VI. First announced alongside Starfield five years ago, its seemingly only just entered pre-production but that hasn’t stopped the gaming community from wanting to know one big thing: Will The Elder Scrolls VI come to PlayStation?
As anyone could reasonably have assumed, the answer to that so far is simply that it hasn’t been decided, at least not publicly. Speaking to Bloomberg in a live interview, Xbox boss Phil Spencer gave a somewhat non-committal response to reporters Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow regarding exclusivity.
“I’m sure you want to dwell on the here, the now, Phil but you’ve been asked and I’m going to ask it again. You mentioned ‘exclusive,’ so does that mean The Elder Scrolls VI will be? How do you mark as to whether this is the right track?” asks Hyde during a spot otherwise focused on Starfield.
“We look at it on a case-by-case basis with the games that we build,” Spencer responds. “We want to make sure our games are available in so many different places, on our Xbox consoles, on PC, also via Cloud – these games can come to almost any web-enabled device. We’re looking at millions and millions of players who have access to Starfield and other Xbox Game Studios games. It’s really about giving players choice around how they wanna play and they build their library of games.”
It’s largely the same sentiment shared by Spencer earlier in the year while talk around acquisitions and exclusivity were at a high due to court proceedings as part of the company’s $69 billion USD bid to acquire Activision Blizzard, where it was reiterated that The Elder Scrolls VI is still five-plus years away:
Asked about Elder Scrolls VI platforms: "It’s so far out it’s hard to understand what the platforms will even be…" … "We’re talking about a game that’s five-plus years away"
Spencer fuzzy on whether he previously made a public statement saying it'd be Xbox-only
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo) June 23, 2023
You can watch the chat between Bloomberg, Phil Spencer and Todd Howard here:
