Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax Media was truly a "wow" moment in the world of technology and gaming. For $7.5 billion, Microsoft acquired a game developer and publisher with huge game franchises and titles. And it left the gaming world wondering if the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S would get platform exclusives for games like "The Elder Scrolls 6" and the PS5 would be left with scraps from Bethesda.

Microsoft rather quickly jumped into the speculation and declared that it would not block Bethesda games from Sony's next-generation console. Now, however, Microsoft seems to be hoping that the Xbox Series X will be the best place to play Bethesda games.

This, according to Xbox CFO Tim Stuart, who said during the Jefferies Interactive Entertainment Virtual Conference

that the entire Bethesda purchase "is not about being exclusive." What we do in the long run is that we have no intention of pulling all of Bethesda's content from Sony or Nintendo or anything else," Stuart said at the conference, transcribed by Seeking Alpha. '[Microsoft] will continue to sell their games on the platforms they have now. We're not going to announce exclusivity or anything like that. But that model will change.

In other words, while Xbox exclusivity has not been 100% ruled out, it appears that Microsoft will stick to offering Bethesda games as cross-platform titles. However, instead of pursuing exclusivity, Stuart believes that Microsoft will position the next generation Xbox console as the best place to play Bethesda games.

"But what we want is that in the long run, we want that content to choose the first or better or best or differentiated experience on our platform. We want Bethesda content to appear at its best on our platform," he explained.

What form this will take remains to be seen, as we know that the Xbox Series X has 12 teraflops of graphics power compared to the PS5's 10.28 teraflops, so maybe the next Starfield or Elder Scrolls game, may look better on Microsoft's consoles.

Stuart then emphasized that the Bethesda acquisition is aimed at encouraging people to subscribe to Xbox Game Pass. As such, Microsoft's game distribution service, which covers Xbox consoles, PCs, and smartphones through its cloud-based game streaming service, will no doubt feature more Bethesda games.

Speaking of the cloud, Stuart praised Microsoft's Azure cloud platform (the second largest in the world), saying it will help bring Xbox games to people around the world who do not have easy access to Xbox. In other words, one can speculate that more Bethesda games could be made available for cloud-powered streaming, or boosted by it.

"Looking ahead 10 years, I think cloud streaming will become more mainstream. Cloud streaming will be more about how users play. That's why I like the connection with Azure," Stuart explains. [Game streaming and the ability to bring AAA-quality games to Android devices, GPU-less PCs, and smart screens will unlock something for gamers that we haven't seen in the past. I think it will be a really, really unique experience for users who never intended to buy a console to be able to participate in the AAA console-quality gaming market."

In short, Microsoft will not set back the PS5 by blocking Bethesda games from it. However, Bethesda seems to be deeply involved in Microsoft's overall goal of having an Xbox ecosystem. And that ecosystem will allow the next generation of Bethesda games to be played on multiple platforms, perhaps at their best.

"Starfield" and "The Elder Scrolls 6," for example, will still have to wait. But when they arrive, the Xbox Series X with Game Pass subscription may be the best way to play them.