Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan seems as keen as anyone to know if PlayStation fans will get to play future Bethesda games.
The fate ofBethesda Softworks’ upcoming projects has been a major talking point sinceMicrosoftannounced in September that it intends toacquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.
Should the deal be completed as expected in early 2021,XboxGame Studios will grow from 15 to 23 development teams, including Bethesda Game Studios, the maker of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, plus upcoming sci-fi gameStarfield.
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In an interview with Russian news agencyTASS,PlayStationboss Ryan was asked how he felt about the acquisition and whetherPS5players might not get to playThe Elder Scrolls 6or Starfield.
“That’s a decision that is out of our hands, we’ll wait and see what happens,” he responded. “I look forward to learning about that.
“We just take a different approach. Our emphasis has been to focus on really steady, slow, but constantorganic growth of our studios, selectively bolstered by acquisitions.
“We respect the steps taken by our competition, they seem logical and sensible,” he added. “But we’re equally happy and confident, we’ve got a better launch lineup than we’ve ever had at any of our console launches.”
Employing some 2,300 staff worldwide, Bethesda Softworks studios also includeid Software(Doom), ZeniMax Online Studios (Elder Scrolls Online),Arkane(Dishonored, Prey),MachineGames(Wolfenstein) andTango Gameworks(The Evil Within).
Following the announcement of the ZeniMax deal, Xbox bossPhil Spencersaid Microsoft willhonour existing PS5 exclusivity agreementsBethesda has in place for games likeDeathloopandGhostwire: Tokyo.
For future Bethesda games, Spencer said “we’ll take other consoles on a case-by-case basis.”
More recently, Xbox CFO Tim Stuart said Microsoft wants future Bethesda games to be“either first or better or best” on Xbox platforms.
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Elsewhere in the TASS interview, Ryan suggested Sony may have an ace up its sleeve to counter Xbox Game Pass. “There is actually news to come, but just not today,” he said when asked how PlayStation will respond to Microsoft’s subscription service.
“We have PlayStation Now which is our subscription service, and that is available in a number of markets,” he continued.
Ryan recentlypredicted PS5 owners won’t have to waituntil the tail end of the console’s lifecycle for some generation-defining games.
And he told TASS “it’s probably 2022 that you’re going to see some wonderful things in the same way that it was 2015/2016 for the previous generation, when the generation defining-games started to be published”.
