A new update on The Elder Scrolls VI may not be what some fans wanted to hear from the highly-anticipated game. Since its initial announcement in 2018, we’ve seen and heard nothing about the next Elder Scrolls game. We don’t have a release date or even platforms, though many have been assuming it will be on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X. However, there are now some question marks around the PS5 version following the latest comments from Xbox boss Phil Spencer.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Last month, Microsoft acquired Bethesda and its IP, which means it now owns The Elder Scrolls series. At the time of the acquisition, many were quick to speculate what this means for The Elder Scrolls 6 coming to PS5, prompting Bethesda and Microsoft to vaguely suggest nothing is changing. When the acquisition was announced, the pair left the door open for the game to come to PS5, but this door may be closing.
In a new interview with Kotaku, Spencer was asked whether it’s possible for Microsoft to make its money back on its $7.5 billion investment with the Bethesda acquisition without bringing games such as The Elder Scrolls 6 to PS5. Answering this, Spencer without hesitation said “yes,” and then followed up with the following:
“I don’t want to be flip about that,” said Spencer. “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.”
As you can see, Spencer suggests that the Bethesda deal “was not done to take games away from another player base,” however, he also notes the game doesn’t need to come to PS5 for it be to a profitable investment or for it to reach a massive audience.
Of course, the fact that Spencer and Microsoft aren’t saying outright whether or not the game is coming to PS5 is a good indication that it’s not. If it was, you would say so. If it wasn’t, you’d hold off on the announcement to avoid the PR hit around the launch of your new console.
At this point, it’s looking quite possible that the game will skip PS5, and this is surely going to be disappointing news for the many players who won’t be able to play it as a result.
