And “whatever that means” is important, because it’s so ambiguous. It could mean that The Elder Scrolls isn’t launching on PS5. It could also mean that the game is launching on PS5, but those prospective profits were not a factor in the deal. Which one is it? For now, that’s entirely up to speculation.
Talking to Kotaku, Xbox boss Phil Spencer explains that the company can recoup the $7.5 billion investment without launching The Elder Scrolls VI on PS5.
“I don’t want to be flip about that. 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.”
Inevitably, the internet has decided “whatever that means” is Xbox and PC exclusivity for Bethesda’s franchise, and the PS5 can suck it, lol. Except it’s not. Maybe.
Context, you guys. Remember, Spencer was asked if The Elder Scrolls VI has to launch on PS5 for Microsoft to recoup the $7.5 billion investment. He wasn’t asked if The Elder Scrolls VI is going to launch on PS5. That’s a subtle difference, I guess, but also a significant difference – and until Microsoft confirms that The Elder Scrolls VI is exclusive to Xbox and PC, assume that it isn’t, and random dudes on Twitter claiming that it is are wrong.