New Bethesda games won't all be Xbox exclusives

Microsoft just bought Bethesda for $7.5 billion, but that doesn't mean all future games will be Xbox exclusives.

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All of Bethesda's games are coming to Xbox Game Pass on Xbox consoles and PC, Microsoft confirms, but PlayStation gamers won't be locked out of future releases. Bethesda plans to honor pre-arranged exclusivity deals with titles like Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo on PlayStation 5. Microsoft also confirms that future Bethesda games will be released on other platforms on a title-by-title basis.

When asked about Starfield and other games coming to PlayStation, Xbox's Phil Spencer told Bloomberg: "We'll take other consoles on a case-by-case basis."

Bethesda's Pete Hines also confirms that the company will still publish its own games under the Bethesda Softworks label. While some titles will likely be locked to Xbox, big new IPs like Starfield or The Elder Scrolls VI might also release onto PlayStation consoles.

The big thing to expect here is exclusive performance and exclusive features, not necessarily exclusive game releases. The Elder Scrolls VI, for example, may have exclusive mod support features not available on PlayStation 5. That goes with extra content like DLCs, and of course features facilitated by the Xbox Series X's higher-end 12TFLOP GPU.

The games industry is still reeling from the announcement, but it's great to see that not every single Bethesda game will be Xbox exclusive moving forward. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Doom have always thrived as third-party multi-platform releases and that's likely to continue moving forward.