Worries over Starfield “skipping Xbox” helped push Microsoft to buy Bethesda

Thus far, much of the legal and regulatory drama surrounding Microsoft's proposed purchase of Activision has centered on concerns about the potential for Microsoft to make major cross-platform franchise Call of Duty into an Xbox console exclusive. But Microsoft Xbox Chief Phil Spencer now says separate concerns surrounding Starfield's potential PlayStation exclusivity helped drive Microsoft's 2020 purchase of Bethesda Softworks parent ZeniMax. In Friday testimony concerning the Federal Trade Commission's attempt to block the Activision purchase, Spencer noted how, in 2020, Sony made paid deals ensuring Bethesda titles Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo would ship on PlayStation months before an Xbox version was available. “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," Spencer said on the stand. Those concerns weren't entirely based on Sony's previous practice, either. Just after the Bethesda purchase was announced, former Kinda Funny Host Imran Khan reported that "Sony had been negotiating timed exclusivity on Starfield as recently as a few months ago." Microsoft's worries about an Xbox-free Starfield are more than a bit ironic now, though, since the FTC and Sony say Microsoft's exclusive capture of the console version of Starfield is prime evidence for why the company's proposed Activision deal shouldn't go through. But Microsoft argues that its effort to secure Xbox exclusives actually increases console market competition by helping an Xbox that has fallen to a third-place market share in the "console wars." "[We] needed to do a lot of work with a lot of partners given the competitive situation we had against the market leader,” Spencer said. “Sony is the market leader with a considerable capability and an aggressive competitor... We try to compete, but as I said, over the last 20 years we’ve failed to do that effectively.” Elsewhere in his Friday testimony, Spencer refused to confirm whether or not Bethesda's upcoming The Elder Scroll VI will come to non-Xbox consoles. “I think we’ve been a little unclear on what platforms it’s launching on, given how far out the game is,” he said. “It’s difficult for us right now to nail down.” That uncertainty contradicts a 2021 interview where Spencer reportedly said Elder Scrolls VI would mirror Starfield by only appearing on Xbox and PC. But we'll have to wait quite a while to see for sure whether that's true; Spencer said on the stand that the game first announced back in 2018 is "five-plus years away," a timeframe that would put an eventual Elder Scrolls VI launch at least 17 years after Skyrim's 2011 release. Regarding Call of Duty, Spencer has now sworn under oath on the witness stand that "my commitment is, and my testimony is, that we will continue to ship future versions of Call of Duty on Sony’s PlayStation 5... Us pulling Call of Duty from PlayStation, in my view, would create irreparable harm for the Xbox brand.”