Whenever a game decides to go exclusive, people are going to be unhappy about it. Still, sometimes the decision is made for production reasons. Since it was announced that Starfield is going to be exclusive to Microsoft platforms, members of the PlayStation community have been audibly upset about it. However, it’s been revealed that if it had been planned for PS5 as well, there’s no telling when the game would actually be released. It’s scheduled to come out later this year, and that Xbox exclusivity helped speed up the release.
Starfield Exclusivity Speeds Up Release Date
Though there are many vast and complex titles available on both Xbox and PlayStation, they are two completely different systems with their own software. Starfield is a huge and expansive game that took many years of development just to get it to run on Xbox and PC. According to Bethesda, had also been planned for PS5, Starfield would have had to have gone through an entirely different process to make it playable on the console.
As reported by Kotaku, the head of Bethesda referenced the amount of time spent on intensive quality assurance for such a large game. The publisher said that by removing PS5 as a release platform, its development and testing time was reduced significantly.
Following Redfall, Starfield is the next big Bethesda title to grant exclusivity to the Microsoft platforms. This is due to an agreement signed between the two companies — an agreement which has put PlayStation on alert. While the PS5 is a powerful console capable of supporting some of the heaviest titles, developing for it as well as Xbox increases development time.
Though multiple Bethesda games have been released on PlayStation in the past, it looks like this is going to change. If Starfield’s exclusivity saved that much time, it’s possible that other studios may consider releasing fewer titles on PlayStation, too. It’s not exactly a bright outlook for Sony console players.
A large number of people in the gaming community are excited to play Starfield, especially with its release date getting ever closer. This was made possible due to avoiding a PS5 release and maintaining exclusivity on Xbox and PC, which very well could be the case for all Bethesda titles going forward.
