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Microsoft will honor Bethesda’s PS5 exclusives, but future console releases will be ‘case-by-case’

Microsoft will honor Bethesda’s PS5 exclusives, but future console releases will be ‘case-by-case’

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Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo will still be timed PS5 exclusives

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Following the announcement of Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda Softworks parent company ZeniMax — owner of Doom, Fallout, and more — some of the biggest questions I saw bouncing around the internet were whether future Bethesda games would become Microsoft exclusives and whether previously announced PlayStation 5 exclusives Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo would remain so.

We now have a little more clarity there: Microsoft will honor the exclusivity commitments for Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo, but other games will hit non-Xbox platforms on a “case-by-case basis,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer told Bloomberg.

Both titles are set to be timed PS5 console exclusives, and both are also supposed to be released on PC when they’re out sometime in 2021. It remains to be seen if they’ll hit Xbox consoles — but given today’s acquisition, that now seems more like a question of “when.”

Deathloop, a first-person shooter about assassins stuck in a time loop, is the latest game from Arkane Studios, which is known for developing the Dishonored series and 2017’s Prey. The game was originally scheduled for a release this year but was delayed to 2021 in August. GhostWire: Tokyo is a first-person melee- and magic-based game where you fight ghosts in Tokyo. It’s developed by Tango Gameworks, makers of The Evil Within and The Evil Within 2.

And if you’re currently a The Elder Scrolls: Online player, you should know that the game will “continue to be supported exactly as it was, and we fully expect it to keep growing and thriving on each of the platforms that are currently supported,” according to ZeniMax Online Studios’ studio director Matt Firor. That game is currently available on the PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and Stadia. The studio said in August that it would be coming to the PS5 and Xbox Series X.