During the hearing for the FTC's current case against Microsoft, Xbox boss Phil Spencer explained that part of the reason the company bought ZeniMax Media, the holding company that owns Bethesda Softworks, was the fear that Starfield might not come to Xbox. Bethesda had made a timed exclusivity deal with Sony for two of its other games, which would keep them off Xbox until a year after release.
"When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire [Tokyo]... to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox," Spencer said, via The Verge. "So the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can't be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership so we've had to secure content to remain viable in the business."
