Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard notes that, from a development standpoint, fewer platforms allow for better quality games for the studio.
Now that Bethesda is officially a part of Microsoft, Todd Howard is praising their current situation, specifically Starfield going Xbox and PC exclusive. Howard is justifying this exclusivity, noting the potential increase in quality.
Howard admits “it’s really about focus”
Bethesda is now part of Microsoft, as part of a $7 billion deal that started last year. The past week, the company released details about their much-awaited title, Starfield. Among the most unsurprising is the game going Xbox and PC exclusive.
This announcement made Playstation 5 users visibly upset, considering Bethesda was known to be a multi-platform studio. In an interview, Todd justified this move for the company, citing quality reasons for their game.
“By focusing on those platforms, you really get to lean in a lot on making it the best it can be for those systems,” started Howard in an interview with Telegraph.
“The hardware definitely helps us do a lot of things with loading and fidelity. But, you know, graphics fidelity is graphics fidelity. I don’t want to come across as like the graphics fidelity is a barrier, do you know what I mean?
“It’s really about focus, that’s what I would say. It’s nice to put the bar high, obviously, but it’s really good to be able to focus and say this is what we’re creating, and here is the bar. Oftentimes, that is governed by just the timing of where you’re at, and where the hardware is at. We’re really fortunate that we get to set the bar really, really high.”
Bethesda should benefit from less platforms
Todd Howard and his new disposition towards exclusivity is weird. Even then, it’s understandable for Bethesda to narrow their scope. For many years, their games suffered consistent buggy gameplay mostly for spending time on multiple platforms.
Almost every game they made either had game-breaking bugs on them or lacked quality of life features for some platforms. Now that they have Microsoft’s backing, they can focus on improving their games’ quality.
“Well the good news is we’ve worked together with [Microsoft] for so long,” added Howard. “Going back since Morrowind, every game I’ve done we’ve had a pretty deep partnership and developed technology together and other things. We gave a lot of thought to where we want to end up, and we talked to Microsoft for a long time about potentially doing something like that.”
Todd Howard and Bethesda have not shown any amount of gameplay footage for Starfield so far. The game is coming out next year, barring expected delays from the company.
Featured image courtesy of Bethesda Softworks/Youtube Screenshot