If you had to break down the topics from yesterday’s Bethesda/Microsoft roundtable presentation, it would likely go with 20 new Bethesda games coming to Xbox Game Pass, then Spencer dropping the bomb of future exclusive titles, and then the exciting possibility of collaboration between Xbox and Bethesda studios.
Microsoft made it very clear that each studio now under their umbrella would retain their distinct identities and that they consider it a good thing for everyone to come to the table to share a different viewpoint. Xbox marketing head Aaron Greenberg expressed his admiration for internal collabs at Xbox, while Bethesda’s SVP of development Todd Vaughn recounted his stories of Bethesda studios sharing resources for the betterment of a game.
“MachineGames is probably one of our most successful developers when it comes to collaboration,” said Vaughn. “They’ve probably worked on everything.”
Another example came from Tango Gameworks. While Id Software was making 2016's Doom reboot, they reached out to Tango for a bit of help in creating one of the game's more iconic demons.
“There’s an enemy that’s in Doom 2016 that Tango made," Vaughn added, "that I don’t think anybody realizes.”
That demon was the Hell Razer, a long-range enemy that fires concentrated blasts of Hell energy at the player. It’s also got a bony exoskeleton that’s pretty tough and requires a lot of punishment to break through.
With so many new studios ready to collaborate, Xbox is going to become a force in the gaming world.
Xbox head Phil Spencer was especially excited to be adding Tango Gameworks to his catalog of developers. As Xbox's first Japanese studio, Spencer said he hoped to "have more first-party presence" in the Asian country, a market that Microsoft has historically struggled to break into.
Tango is currently working on Ghostwire: Tokyo, which will release as a PS5 exclusive in October. Spencer said that all former Bethesda studios will honor any previous exclusive arrangements, but that future games will almost certainly be exclusive to PC and Xbox.