Todd Howard says it's "hard to imagine" Elder Scrolls 6 being Xbox exclusive

Bethesda Game Studios head Todd Howard has expressed his thoughts on the exclusivity debacle regarding The Elder Scrolls 6.

With Microsoft poised to acquire Bethesda Softworks parent company Zenimax Media next year for a sum of $7.5 billion, many have been questioning whether Xbox will allow the acquired developers to create multiplatform games.

Previously, Xbox boss Phil Spencer revealed that Bethesda games would come to other platforms on a case-by-case basis, explaining that they do not need to create multiplatform games to recoup the massive purchase.

Despite this, in a recent GI.biz interview, Todd Howard explained that after decades of multiplatform development, he “would agree that is hard to imagine” Elder Scrolls 6 being only available on Xbox and PC.

“We do view it, and always have by ourselves, on a case-by-case basis,” Howard continued. “We’ll do that as part of Microsoft as well. They’ve been pretty open on other platforms and not just within Xbox. This is an outside perspective, but if you go back ten years at Microsoft, you wouldn’t expect them to have a full Office suite on an iPhone either.

“I can’t really project where things will be except to say we’ve done those sort of exercises ourselves as an independent. If you look at every Elder Scrolls game, there has been some exclusivity on Xbox or with Microsoft. We’ve partnered with every game. Morrowind was basically a console exclusive, Oblivion was a long timed exclusive, Skyrim’s DLC was exclusive for a long period of time.

“We’ll decide what makes the best sense for our audience when the time comes, and I can’t really project today what that looks like.”

No matter what happens with Elder Scrolls 6, it’ll still be included in Xbox’s monthly subscription service Xbox Game Pass. As for exclusive RPGs, Xbox does also have Obsidian’s Avowed RPG in the works.