Elder Scrolls VI

Bethesda

While it has been apparent for a while now that Xbox is in dire straits, now its actual CEO is laying that out pretty plainly. In a recent blog post, Asha Sharma laid out many issues ranging from tiny division margins to exploding component costs, all balanced with its biggest gamer complaint, a lack of big Xbox first-party games, and namely big first-party games that are Xbox exclusives.

Recent reporting indicates a number of potential plans for Xbox going forward, including the drastic idea of Microsoft spinning out the entire brand. But besides that, Sharma is reportedly looking to push hard on getting Xbox’s biggest franchises out the door, and Elder Scrolls VI, a new Fallout and a new Halo are mentioned specifically.

Sharma is right to do this, of course, as it is baffling that it has taken so long to get these games out,, with gaps between games sometimes lasting more than a decade, due to unwise detours or internal issues. With these three?

• Elder Scrolls VI was announced almost 8 years ago, back in 2018, and the last mainline game in the series, Skyrim, was in 2011.
• Fallout 4 was released in 2015, and outside of its 76 detour, a fifth mainline game is said to be Bethesda’s next project after Elder Scrolls. So we’re talking probably 15 years here, unless a studio like Obsidian is thrown on it like, now, to accelerate that.
• Finally, Halo Infinite was released “only” five years ago in 2021, but reception was tepid, and it remains one of the only major Xbox IPs out of the likes of Forza, Gears and now even Fable that is on ice. Something is in the works, but nothing has been shown or even officially announced.

The acceleration issue is itself going to be a challenge due to the cost and time these games take. Even if something like Elder Scrolls VI taking this long seems absurd, a “condensed” version of that would have been what, five years? And it’s not clear how long Xbox can continue to exist in its current form, no matter if Satya Nadella says Microsoft is “long” on gaming.

All three of these games raise what is probably the most important question: which would be exclusive?

The immediate answer here for many fans is “all of them.” They are some of the biggest franchises in all of gaming, with Elder Scrolls especially at least somewhat close to a Grand Theft Auto in terms of anticipation of release. Surely, those games being exclusive would be the rebound Xbox would need, and “system sellers” in their own right.

I buy this about Halo. Given the way things are going, and moves like taking Gears of War: E-Day off of PS5 when that was not the original plan, indicate that Xbox is ready to claw back some of its biggest IPs, and there is none bigger than Halo, where a new, mainline Halo game releasing on PlayStation would be the ultimate white flag.

I do not believe that Xbox will take the next step and make those huge Bethesda games, Elder Scrolls and Fallout, Xbox exclusive. Why? A few reasons.

These games are enormously expensive, and making them Xbox exclusive, by definition, would drastically reduce sales and, by extension, revenue.

• This is because sales of first-party Xbox games are very low, due to the fact that nearly all games are put Day One on Game Pass. So if you’re already a subscriber, you don’t need to buy it. And there is only so much room for Game Pass to continue to grow, as evidenced by the current ceiling it's running into (and most recently, a dip due to an insane 50% price hike).
• As for being a “system seller,” unlike PlayStation, there no such thing as a true Xbox exclusive so long as these games are available on PC or even the cloud. And with rising hardware costs. Skyrocketing ones, in fact, it is now much harder to “system sell” with a game when things have gone from $500 to likely $1000 soon in just a few years.
• PlayStation remains an enormous ecosystem. The PS5 has sold 93 million units worldwide, and while we don’t know the ratio, it’s beating Xbox, at minimum, it’s 2:1, and likely significantly more than that as Xbox hardware sales have collapsed. Plus, many of those are Xbox Series Ss, which would no doubt struggle to run a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout game coming out close to 2030 or beyond. Microsoft would have to forgo potentially tens of millions of sales on PlayStation over time if it kept it from that console, at a $70 or potentially even $80 price point if things keep trending in that direction.

While Xbox fans may think its obvious those two games will be kept exclusives to benefit the brand, it is very, very hard to see the benefits outweighing the costs with all these factors to consider. But this may not be a decision that even needs to be made for years, and who knows what the state of Xbox will be then?

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.