Xbox is about to leave PlayStation in the shimmering space dust of Starfield

It’s been a long time coming, however starfield Almost here. Today is almost upon us. The time is near. September 1st for pre-orders and September 6th for everyone.

For the very first time, very A long time ago, Xbox was about to launch the biggest console exclusive of the year – bigger than Sony’s spiderman 2, Bigger than Nintendo The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom’s Tears.

In a year filled with huge game releases —Hogwarts Legacy, Diablo IV, Baldur’s Gate 3, Etc – nothing so highly anticipated as starfield, Bethesda’s answer to the question: “What if skyrim, But in space?

This is partly due to starfield It’s been in development for a long time, in part because of another big RPG from Bethesda—Manuscripts of the Sixth Elder– still years away. starfield It was announced in 2018, before Microsoft acquired Bethesda’s parent company ZeniMax in 2020 for $7.5 billion.

In fact, Microsoft decided to pull the trigger for this acquisition due to concerns that Sony might cut a deal with Bethesda to shut down Xbox.

“When we acquired ZeniMax, one of the drivers behind that was because Sony had done a deal for it. death loop And Justwire “You’re going to pay Bethesda not to ship those games on the Xbox,” Xbox chief Phil Spencer said during a Federal Trade Commission hearing against Microsoft earlier this year. So the discussion is about starfield when we heard it starfield It’s also possible that we’ll end up bypassing the Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we lag further behind in ownership of our content, so we’ve had to secure content to still be able to continue to operate.

Now it looks like the chickens are returning home to roost on Sony. Those exclusive deals may have paid off in the short term, but with Xbox now entirely owned by Bethesda, it’s unlikely that more of its games will come to PlayStation. starfield It is the first of many. that Indiana Jones The game is in the works at Bethesda that will also skip PlayStation, and it seems unlikely Manuscripts of the Sixth Elder It will launch on any console other than Xbox.

And Bethesda is not the only game development company acquired by Microsoft. Along with a handful of smaller studios, Microsoft is currently working on an acquisition Call of duty Publisher Activision in a deal worth nearly $70 billion.

With Microsoft making these huge games part of Xbox Game Pass, the barrier to play is lower than ever for Xbox gamers, who can easily start a Game Pass subscription just to play one title and then pause their membership until another game they want is released. to play.

Whether this is a healthy future for the video game industry or a sustainable one for game developers and publishers is another matter entirely.

This could be the start of a major shift in the console wars, especially if… starfield It turned out to be a hit. Based on success He falls And ancient scrolls series, this seems like a foregone conclusion.

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