This week, Microsoft and Bethesda confirmed that Starfield will be coming exclusively to Xbox Series X/S and PC next year. And while that kind of exclusivity deal had been hinted at and heavily suspected by many since Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda’s parent company, the announcement still came as sad news for PlayStation 5 owners hoping to play the upcoming space epic.

Bethesda Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications Pete Hines said he can certainly understand how PS5 owners must feel. In a video interview with GameSpot Wednesday, he offered his sympathy and an apology to PS5 owners upset about the move.

“I don’t know how to allay the concerns of consumer and PlayStation 5 fans other than to say I’m a PlayStation 5 player as well, and I’ve played games on that console, and there’s games I’m going to continue to play on it,” Hines said. “But if you want to play Starfield, [it’s] Xbox and PC. Sorry. All I can say is I apologize because I’m certain that that’s frustrating to folks, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.”

Look on the bright side

At the same time, Hines seemed to suggest that Xbox Cloud Gaming could provide a way for players who don’t have an Xbox or a gaming PC to access Starfield through the “Xbox ecosystem.” Hines mentioned that Xbox chief Phil Spencer “has talked about how they’re looking to expand that and… looking to bring Xbox games to folks who don’t own a Series S or X or even a PC but want to play the games that we’re bringing to Game Pass.” That’s an apparent reference to Microsoft’s recently announced plans to expand Xbox Cloud Gaming to many Smart TVs and generic web browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Edge.

Hines also said Starfield‘s exclusivity could help its developers focus on the gameplay experience rather than compatibility with additional platforms. “I’m here to tell you, and any [developer] will tell you this, [when] you go to fewer platforms, your development gets more streamlined,” he said. “You’re not worrying about, ‘Well, how does it work on this box versus how does it work on that box…’ We’re not making it on that box, so it just needs to run as well as possible on this one [and] on a PC. A narrow focus always helps…”

That statement echoes comments Bethesda producer Todd Howard made to The Telegraph this week, when he said that, “by focusing on those platforms [Xbox and PC], you really get to lean in a lot on making it the best it can be for those systems.”

In that interview, Howard also said he had “a little bit” of reservation about not having a PS5 version of Starfield. “You don’t ever want to leave people out, right?” But Howard also suggested that Xbox Cloud Gaming means “we see it actually opening up more and more and more so that people’s ability to play our games—via Game Pass and other things—their ability to play our games doesn’t go down. It goes up dramatically… I will just say I want everybody to have the ability to play it in some fashion.”

Back in October, Howard said it was “hard to imagine” a game like the upcoming Elder Scrolls VI being exclusive to Microsoft’s platforms. But that was before Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda was finalized in March, at a time when Howard admitted the two companies hadn’t fully discussed the details of any multiplatform publishing agreements. “We haven’t gone through all of that, to be honest,” he said at the time. https://arstechnica.com/?p=1774277