Xbox was worried it might lose Starfield before the Bethesda acquisition

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Phil Spencer explained as part of today’s FTC hearing that there was a chance Starfield would skip the Xbox platform entirely at some point, and the company felt it had to “secure content to remain viable in business.”

Here’s what the head of Xbox had to say earlier today, courtesy of The Verge:

“When we acquired ZeniMax, one of the triggers for that was that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire… to push Bethesda not to ship those games on Xbox.”

“So the discussion around Starfield when we heard that Starfield was also likely to end up bypassing Xbox, we can’t be positioned as a third-place console where we’re further behind in our content ownership so we had to secure content to remain viable.” in business.”

Of course, Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo ended up being PlayStation exclusives for a year even after the Bethesda acquisition, with Microsoft promising to honor Sony’s existing deals for both titles.

So not only is Microsoft counting on Starfield to be the biggest first-party hit of 2023, but the company is also suggesting it was a big reason they paid $7.5 billion for ZeniMax Media in early 2021! Let’s hope it lives up to the hype…

What are your thoughts on this? Tell us in the comments section below.

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