Bethesda’s Indiana Jones Game Was Originally Meant To be Multi-Platform

gameranx.com:

Plenty is going on with Microsoft right now that will affect the future of gaming, whether people want to admit it or not. The biggest thing they’re dealing with currently is the trial over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft has been trying for months to lock in the deal to make their next big expansion. However, Sony has been fighting them tooth and nail to stop the deal so that they can prevent, in their own words, “a loss of major games due to exclusivity.” That’s important because Xbox and Microsoft have denied that this will happen, but a man named Indiana Jones might disagree with that.

You see, Sony’s Jim Ryan has repeatedly said that if Xbox gets “sole ownership” of Call of Duty and other big franchises under the Activision Blizzard banner, it’ll create an unfair balance in the gaming scape. Xbox countered this by making deals with Nintendo to ensure that the games would be multi-platform for at least a decade. However, during the trial hearing today, Pete Hines of Xbox admitted that the upcoming Indiana Jones game from Bethesda, which is under the Xbox banner, was originally multi-platform before it went exclusive:

FTC lawyer questioning Bethesda's Pete Hines confirms that Disney had a deal for an Indiana Jones game that'd be for multiple consoles. Hines confirms. FTC says deal was amended post-acquisition to be Xbox only for consoles.

So this was a game that would’ve been on multiple systems, but then Xbox got its hands on Bethesda, and the deal changed. While that may sound like a “one-off example,” it’s important to state that if it can be done once, it could absolutely be done again.

Here’s another factor to consider, Microsoft is doing everything in its power to state how it needs the deal to