Starfield was reportedly almost a PlayStation exclusive. Over the last few years, there has been a lot of drama over Xbox possibly having too much power in the industry. Xbox is backed by Microsoft, which means it has deep pockets and can acquire a bunch of franchises, publishers, and developers. One of its biggest acquisitions was ZeniMax, the umbrella that owns Bethesda, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. This came during the height of the development of Bethesda’s next big game, Starfield, a massively ambitious sci-fi game that takes the DNA of Bethesda’s RPGs and blows it up to a galactic level.
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With that said, there has been a lot of frustration from gamers that Starfield will be exclusive to Xbox and PC when it releases later this year. It was expected to come to PlayStation prior to the acquisition, but was never formally confirmed. With that said, it sounds like there’s a world where the game was never even going to come to Xbox. During the FTC vs Microsoft hearing in regards to the Activision acquisition, Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed that one of the major reasons Microsoft acquired Bethesda was because there was a chance it would lose Starfield. Spencer noted that Microsoft heard that Sony was potentially looking into making Starfield a third-party exclusive, so Microsoft just decided to buy the entire company to prevent that. Whether or not Sony would have definitively made it an exclusive is unclear, it’s entirely possible it also could’ve been a timed exclusive.
Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo were exclusive to PlayStation for a whole year before they came to Xbox, as those deals were made prior to the acquisition. Sony has also aggressively invested in making various Final Fantasy games exclusive to PlayStation, shutting Xbox out of one of the biggest Japanese franchises. With that said, it’s obvious the competition is incredibly intense between Xbox and PlayStation, so much so that they’re willing to spend billions of dollars to not get beat.
What do you think of Starfield almost possibly being a PlayStation exclusive? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
