In early 2021, Bethesda and MachineGames announced that they were working on a completely new Indiana Jones game. Since then, we have not heard much about the game, but during the ongoing hearings on the FTC's objections to Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it became clear that the game would be exclusive to Xbox and PC.

What makes this situation particularly interesting is that Bethesda initially planned the Indiana Jones game as a multiplatform release. However, the situation changed a few months after the announcement when Microsoft acquired Bethesda and made it an Xbox console exclusive; as reported by IGN, Pete Hines, head of publishing at Bethesda, said the decision reduced the risk and licensed the rights to produce the game to Bethesda He stated that it was made to gain "some clarity" from Disney.

"You are dealing with licensors who are going to give you massive amounts of feedback on what you are making and add massive amounts of time to your scheduling, these contracts can't take as long as you want, you are going to release the game have a window of time that you're in, you have a clock that's ticking on you immediately," Hines said.

In other words, Bethesda does not have complete control over the Indiana Jones game.

Indiana Jones games are not the only ones to switch from multiplatform to console exclusivity after Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda. Redfall suffered the same fate: Arkane Austin studio head Harvey Smith told IGN France (via Google Translate) in March that the cancellation of a planned PlayStation 5 version was "a good decision."

Of course, making console-specific games is ultimately more about making the platform look good than about making development easier, but it would be in Microsoft's best interest to make that distinction clear at this hearing: developing games for the PlayStation discontinuation is probably not something Microsoft wants regulators to hear too much about, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer pointed out that exclusivity works both ways: as Axios' Stephen Totilo reported on Twitter, Spencer said that Disney's owned Spider-Man hit game is exclusive to the PlayStation console.