Starfield almost became a PS5 exclusive at one point

A little more than three years ago, we revealed that Sony was in negotiations with Bethesda about making Starfield a PlayStation 5 exclusive title. Obviously this didn't happen as Microsoft shortly after announced their intention of buying Bethesda, a deal that was sealed the year after, with Starfield becoming an Xbox (and PC) exclusive title instead.

Now it turns out Microsoft buying Bethesda was actually a response to Sony's plans of making Starfield a PlayStation game. Here's what the Xbox boss Phil Spencer had to say about this during the FTC hearings regarding Microsoft's plan to acquire Activision Blizzard:

"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. 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."

Starfield launches on September 6 for PC and Xbox. Now we know it could just as easily have been PC and PlayStation instead, which didn't happen as Microsoft had other plans.

Thanks, The Verge.