Insider: Sony was negotiating timed exclusivity on Starfield

Unless you've slept under a rock since Sunday, you are probably aware that Microsoft has purchased ZeniMax, the company owning developers like Bethesda, Arkane, Id Software, and Tango Gameworks. A deal like this (the price tag was $7.5 billion) isn't usually made over a cup of coffee, but the well-known insider Imran Khan just might have shed some light on something that might have helped Microsoft make the decision.

Khan was one of the two insiders that last week revealed that Microsoft was spending a lot of money on something mysterious, and yesterday he had more news to share about this story on Twitter:

"FUN NOTE: Sony had been negotiating timed exclusivity on Starfield as recently as a few months ago. Going to guess either those talks are done or the price suddenly went way, way up."

As Starfield is supposed to be the biggest Bethesda game of all time, it would have been a major blow for Xbox to let Sony have it as a timed exclusive, something that Microsoft surely had to factor in when signing this deal. Now it just might end up the other way instead, with Starfield as an exclusive or time exclusive for Xbox (and, of course, PC).