Microsoft and Bethesda Roundtable event roundup

Xbox and Bethesda have held a roundtable talk to discuss the future of the teams together. On Tuesday of this week it was officially confirmed that Xbox and Bethesda would officially be merging to forge the future of gaming on the xbox platform; in this roundtable it was officially confirmed that multiple games will be coming to Xbox Game Pass tomorrow and that some games in the future will be exclusive to Xbox and PC.

Let’s start with Xbox Game Pass, Xbox and Bethesda have officially announced that 20 games from the Bethesda lineup will be available on Game Pass from March 12th 2021. These include games from the Dishonored, Doom, Elder Scrolls, The Evil Within, Fallout, Prey, Rage and Wolfenstein series, this means that games from almost all of Bethesda’s biggest franchises will be available on Game Pass. The full lineup can be seen here.

Phil Spencer also confirmed that we can expect gmaes in the future to be exclusive to platforms “Where Game Pass Exists” which could mean that as long as a game doesn’t have a prior contract to be on either the PS4, PS5 or Nintendo Switch then it could be made exclusive to Xbox and PC platforms. This should come as no surprise as many people have speculated that this would be the case. However, it is still a sad thing for sony fans as this could signify the end of Bethesda games on PlayStation consoles meaning they may no longer get access to games in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises as well as many others.

Of course as this is a roundtable we did see lots of discussion about the previous relationship between Xbox and Bethesda. When asked about their previous relationship both Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, and Todd Howard, Executive Producer at Bethesda, said that the relationship between the two companies has always been crucial to what they work on in the future. Howard also said that when the fallout 76 issues were at their highest one of his first calls was to Phil Spencer for advice on how to handle the issue and how to improve the game. It’s clear from what both of these companies say that they have both been relying on each other for a long time and it will be interesting to see what they do in the future.

Another subject that was touched upon was backwards compatibility and how much it means to developers. According to Todd Howard, the inclusion of backwards compatibility on the Xbox consoles means lots to developers as it allows for games to still be played even after the generation of console that they were released on has gone meaning that games hold their value for much longer. Aaron Greenberg also mentioned that multiple games in the Bethesda lineup will be getting support for FPS boost on Xbox Series X and S and that an announcement of which games will be supported is coming soon.

Speaking of announcements, that is all of the major news that was announced today. Erin Losi, a marketing manager at Bethesda, also revealed that we can expect more major announcements to be made in the summer of this year.