Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer says they can stop Bethesda games outside their ecosystem. He believes they can recoup the US$7.5 billion spent without the PS5.
Over the last few months, Microsoft rocked the gaming industry with the purchase of Zenimax. It put into question if Xbox will stop launching games on the Playstation 5. Phil Spencer says “they can,” not that they will outright.
He also notes that the money spent on Zenimax can come back even if they stopped adding titles on Sony’s platform.
Xbox will honor previous deals with Playstation
Zenimax Media is a necessary purchase for Microsoft. It added eight studios under the Xbox umbrella in one fell swoop. Among those include Id Software, Bethesda Softworks, and Arkane Studios.
With this massive acquisition, Microsoft now has control over many AAA titles. Many of these games, including DOOM and Fallout, are coming to Playstation too. At the same time, Xbox has said that they will honor previous deals.
Even then, it’s up to them to launch on PS5 for future titles. In an interview, Spencer hinted they have the power to do so.
“I don’t want to be flip about that,” Spencer said. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games.
“But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”
Microsoft can recoup the investment in Zenimax, says Xbox head
Phil Spencer is very confident that they can recoup the money spent on Zenimax. He gave a flat out “Yes” when asked about it.
Microsoft has a history of keeping their games multi-platform. When they got Minecraft dev Mojang Studios, they allowed it to stay on the Playstation. Spencer and Xbox can keep Zenimax titles multi-platform, but with a catch.
He notes that they can keep the prices down on their platforms while charging full price on competitors. A killer deal can help convince players to move into the Xbox ecosystem. Phil Spencer knows this, and he’s keeping his cards close to his chest.
Featured image courtesy of Phil Spencer/Twitter