Is anyone really that surprised? A Redfall developer told IGN that the game underwent huge development changes after Microsoft bought Bethesda as its PS5 port plans were forced to be abandoned.
When Microsoft said that their purchase of Bethesda had not affected the port development of games for third party publishers (ex: PlayStation), its nose would have grown 10 feet long. That’s how bad of a lie it was.
For those who don’t know what I’m referring to, Microsoft famously stated after its $7.5B purchase of Bethesda Softworks and its parent company ZeniMax Media in 2021 that upcoming Bethesda games, which would include Redfall at the time, would be prevented from releasing on PlayStation’s store. However, according to a lead developer on Redfall, that wasn’t the case.
In speaking to IGN France with Redfall’s release date soon approaching (the game comes out in June of 2023), game director Harvey Smith stated that Microsoft’s executives and representatives specifically told him and his development team all plans to port/develop the game over to the PS5 must be scrapped as the game was not coming to PlayStation, a clear violation of what Microsoft assured would not happen when Bethesda was originally purchased.
Obviously, Microsoft immediately came out and said that conversation never happened and pointed to different instances where Zenimax/Bethesda games went to PlayStation, but this situation reeks of Microsoft’s looming monopoly over the gaming industry.
Sure, games like Ghostwire: Tokyo and Deathloop, both of which were contractually agreed upon to be PlayStation Exclusive games prior to Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda, went solely to PlayStation’s store initially after the purchase, but they didn’t stay that way.
After only a year, Micrsoft ordered both games to be made available on Xbox and Xbox Game Pass, which obviously ruins the PlayStation Exclusivity the game developers had in mind when they originally developed the game.
Now, I’m not defending PlayStation Exclusive titles or these game studios for signing said agreements with Sony as I believe these types of games have forced Microsoft into being the malignant monopoly we see today, but this breach of exclusivity clearly goes against Microsoft’s claims of “all games going over to PlayStation”.
If a game developer agrees to make exclusive games for PlayStation, then said games should not be artificially ported to the Xbox Game Pass subscription due to Microsoft’s greedy, relentless nature. Nevertheless, Redfall will not be the Bethesda IP that makes or breaks the case against Microsoft’s corrosive monopoly in the gaming world: that’ll be the fate of the Elder Scrolls VI.
Sony has already come out and decried against Microsoft turning the uber popular game franchise into an Xbox Exclusive title, but that might not be enough to stop Microsoft from doing it. If the company decides it wants to attract millions of more fans to its Xbox Game Pass subscription/streaming service, then turning the Elder Scrolls franchise into an exclusive title is the way to go.
There have been nearly 60M copies of Elder Scrolls titles sold since the original The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released all the way back in 1994, while the latest entry to the main The Elder Scrolls franchise, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, won numerous Game of the Year awards back in 2011. Simply put, this is one of the biggest and most beloved game franchises in the world today.
And that’s exactly why Microsoft would be smart and insufferably greedy to turn the famed franchise into an Xbox Exclusive entry, just as it has seemingly done with Redfall.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Bethesda Softworks/Microsoft) (Redfall – Official Story Trailer – YouTube)
