Xbox, Bethesda and the round table with Phil Spencer
The official marriage between Microsoft and ZeniMax was celebrated with an interesting round table that saw the leading figures of Xbox and Bethesda as protagonists.Phil Spencer, Aaron Greenberg and Todd Howard had the opportunity to meet live at the studios of ZeniMax Online and Bethesda, but organizing such an event in times of pandemic was by no means easy. Greenberg himself, through a sort of travel diary shared with the public on Twitter, offered an interesting picture of the behind the scenes of the appointment.
In the latter, the Xbox executive first summarized some of the measures adopted in terms of containing the Covid-19 risk. Before being able to get on the plane - the first trip in over a year for Greenberg - the Xbox team had to undergo a swab, a procedure replicated a second time before being able to access the headquarters of the software house. But not only: once in the structure, Phil Spencer, Aaron Greenberg and all the technicians involved in the shooting had to wear a special wrist signal, aimed at ensuring compliance with the social safety distance.
Obviously, the story goes on, it was not possible to realize prov e for the streaming broadcast, with the conversation based exclusively on a rough program. An approach in any case appreciated by Xbox and Bethesda, who wanted to preserve an atmosphere of naturalness and informality for the round table. Apparently, in a short time, even the rough program was shelved, with Todd Howard who proceeded to convert it into paper airplanes!
The last snapshot of the trip shows us Phil Spencer intent on exploiting xCloud while waiting for the return flight to Redmond. The Green Cross team said they were excited about the experience and eager to shape a joint future for Xbox and Bethesda. To celebrate the new partnership, Bethesda games have invaded Xbox Game Pass, bringing about twenty prestigious productions to the catalog of the service.
20 Bethesda games are now on Xbox Game Pass
Xbox Game Pass owners can now download Dishonored 2, Doom Eternal, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Wolfenstein: Youngblood and over a dozen other games at no extra cost.
Nearly all of Bethesda’s games released in the past 10 years will be coming to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Microsoft announced in an Xbox Wire blog post, and a handful of these games will also benefit from FPS Boost on Xbox Series X, too.
All 20 games will be available to play on the console version of Xbox Game Pass, but Microsoft says 16 of those titles will also be available on PC, console and mobile devices as well through the cloud for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members, meaning it will be possible to play Skyrim and Fallout 4 on your mobile phone.
Here’s the complete list of included games:
The Xbox Game Pass news arrives just hours after a tweet from the general manager of games at Xbox, Aaron Greenberg, told Twitter that there'd be a round table discussion with Xbox Chief Phil Spencer about Microsoft's recent acquisition of Bethesda and its studios.
During the round table discussion, Spencer emphasized that the acquisition of Bethesda would be beneficial to Xbox gamers, but stopped shy of explaining what exactly is going to happen in the future with Bethesda titles – including the highly anticipated next game in The Elder Scrolls franchise, The Elder Scrolls 6, or Starfield. The big question that hasn't been answered: will future Bethesda games only come to Xbox consoles?
'Obviously I can’t sit here and say every Bethesda game is exclusive, because we know that’s not true,' Spencer said. 'There are contractual obligations that we’re going to see through, as we always do in every one of these instances. We have games that exist on other platforms, and we’re gonna go support those games on the platforms they’re on.'
It seems unlikely that Microsoft will make all Bethesda games first-party exclusives, then, but Microsoft has said recently that some new games will be exclusive or have exclusive functionality on Xbox consoles like the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
For Xbox gamers unacquainted with Bethesda's back catalog of titles, however, their arrival on Xbox Game Pass is as good of a time as any to dive in.
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