Todd Howard discusses the pressure Bethesda is now feeling as a first-party studio
Starfield Game Director Todd Howard thinks it’s “great” that Bethesda is now a first-party Xbox studio. However, this exclusivity also comes with a great deal of responsibility. The producer spoke about the pressures and challenges of being an exclusive Xbox developer in an interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
An exclusive feeling
Howard explains that Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda benefited Starfield’s development. The title is slated for release on Xbox and PC next year. Developing such a console selling title would make him feel a certain pressure to perform.
“We’ve had a lot of success with the games you’ve talked about, but we’ve never been anything like the platform seller, you know, ‘the game’ for a platform for a period of time, so there’s a lot of pressure , there’s a lot of responsibility to make sure we deliver that to everyone.”
In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, Starfield had to be postponed from time to time. Howard says it wasn’t an easy decision for the team to make, but it was “the right decision”. The deal with Microsoft allowed Bethesda to work with “Xbox’s top engineers”. In the end, the concept of Xbox exclusivity for Bethesda is not that new, explains Howard.
“Don’t forget that this exclusivity isn’t unique to us, although we’ve done stuff for the PlayStation and I think the PS5 is just an amazing machine – they’ve done a great job and we’ve had great success on the PlayStation,” according to the producer.
But Bethesda also had a lot of good experiences with Xbox before they became a first-party studio. “In the beginning, we were traditionally a PC developer. Morrowind is basically Xbox exclusive, Oblivion was Xbox exclusive for a long time, the Skyrim DLC was exclusive, so we did a lot of Xbox development.”
“So when we go into development and say we’re going to focus on Xbox, that’s not at all unusual for us, it’s sort of the norm. And on the development side, I like being able to focus and get help from To get them, you know, the top Xbox engineers to say we’re going to make this look incredible on the new systems, I think is just awesome.”
Reference-www.eurogamer.de