Ever since Microsoft announced its $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda, soon-to-be PS5 owners have had one question on their minds. After all, console makers don't often spend billions on companies and grab the competitive advantage that monopolies bring with both hands.

Now Xbox boss Phil Spencer has come the closest to confirming the worst: In a wide-ranging interview with Kotaku, Spencer was asked a simple question directly: if you don't sell "The Elder Scrolls VI" on PlayStation If not, would it be possible to recoup the $7.5 billion investment? His answer was admirably succinct.

But there is still room," he continued. ' he continued. 'This agreement was not made to take the game away from the rest of the player base. Nowhere in the document we put together did it say, 'How can we prevent other players from playing these games? We want more people to be able to play the games, not less people to be able to go play them."

"But I would also say in the model - I was just directly answering the question you had - when you think about the number of devices we had, where people are going to play, we had xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base had, I don't want to have to ship these games on other platforms other than the platforms we support to make the deal work for us. Whatever that means."

In short, this generation doesn't look good for Bethesda fans who find themselves solely in the PlayStation ecosystem. However, we won't be able to officially confirm the absence of certain titles until closer to the release date.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the Bethesda acquisition is very recent and, in fact, is not even scheduled to close until Q2 2021. This means that many of the games that were supposed to be multiplatform may be so far along in development that there is no point in canceling them.

The other is that while reservation interest in both the Xbox Series X and PS5 is very healthy, both consoles could crash and burn in the long run. if the PS5 outperforms the Xbox Series X by more than 10 to 1, Microsoft really insist on making Bethesda games exclusive to the Xbox, maybe if PC sales are still healthy, but even then there is an element of cutting off the nose to spite the face.

Spencer has previously described the company's plan to treat each game on a "case-by-case" basis, and early indications may look promising on the surface. For example, "Deathloop" is a PS5 launch exclusive, and the upcoming "Doom Eternal" DLC will not be an Xbox exclusive; "Ghostwire: Ghostwire:Tokyo" is a Bethesda exclusive for PS5 and PC, and as time goes on We will have to wait and see if it ceases to be an exclusive.

In the long run, however, PS5 gamers who love Fallout and Elder Scrolls may not be able to take their eyes off of the $299 Xbox Series S.