Bethesda’s Redfall, which is planned to launch in May 2023 and seems to be another wonderful day-one addition to the Xbox Game Pass catalogue, was given a generous dose of hands-on previews earlier this week.
At the same time, Redfall creative director Harvey Smith attempted to imply in an interview released by IGN French that Redfall for the PS5 had been scrapped as a result of Xbox acquiring ZeniMax Media. This resulted in numerous media outlets, including us at Pure Xbox, covering the story, which was (unsurprisingly) the cause:
At that time, Microsoft has been speaking with reporters about the issue and saying that it “ withdrawn any games from PlayStation.” Here is the complete statement, courtesy of Eurogamer:
“We haven’t removed any PlayStation games. After ZeniMax was acquired by Sony, we have actually increased the number of games we ship on the PlayStation, and the first two releases we made following the close were PlayStation 5 exclusives. Since closing down Minecraft, we continued to expand the scope of that franchise.
“When we acquired ZeniMax in March 2021, all of the titles that were available on PlayStation were still there, and we kept adding new material to PlayStation and PC. The future distribution of ZeniMax titles for other systems will be decided on a case-by-case basis, as we have always stated.”
It’s difficult to determine exactly what happened with Redfall; the initial interview seemed to indicate that the game was eventually intended for the PS5, but it doesn’t mean it was in development at the time.
Since Bethesda took control of the company, everything has the potential to be an Xbox (and PC) exclusive, and Redfall, along with games like Starfield and even Hi-Fi RUSH, are clear examples of this.
