Xbox head Phil Spencer has said one of the main reasons Microsoft bought Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax was because of potential Starfield PlayStation exclusivity.
This comes from the current trial being held between the US' Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft regarding the latter's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. As reported by The Verge, Spencer spoke of how Sony frequently pays competitors to "skip our platform," leading Microsoft to believe it needed to own Bethesda to stand up to the competition.
"When we acquired ZeniMax one of the impetus for that is that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire... to pay Bethesda to not ship those games on Xbox," Spencer said at the trial. "So the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business."
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