Microsoft will honor already announced Bethesda games coming to PS5, but the rest will be on a 'case-by-case basis'

• In a Monday morning surprise, Microsoft revealed plans to acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion.
• ZeniMax is the parent company of game publisher Bethesda Softworks, which makes "Fallout," "DOOM," and "The Elder Scrolls," among many other games.
• The deal is the latest in a string of Microsoft gaming acquisitions intended to bolster the Xbox gaming portfolio, and will bring major franchises in-house to Xbox Studios.
• Excluding two games that are headed to Sony's PlayStation 5, Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed that the highly-anticipated "Starfield" is only coming to Xbox and PC platforms.
• The next major entries in franchises like "The Elder Scrolls" and "Fallout" are likely to be exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox and PC platforms, leaving the PlayStation 5 out.

Just days after Sony announced pricing for the PlayStation 5, Microsoft revealed a huge surprise on Monday morning: The acquisition of the massive game publisher behind franchises like "Fallout," "The Elder Scrolls," and "Doom" in a deal worth $7.5 billion in cash.

The deal for the conglomerate ZeniMax Media and its games publisher Bethesda Softworks will incorporate several major video-game-development studios under Microsoft's Xbox Studios umbrella, as well as the major game franchises they oversee.

Bethesda Softworks oversees the studios ID Software ("Doom"), Bethesda Game Studios ("Fallout," "The Elder Scrolls," "Starfield"), Arkane Studios ("Dishonored," "Deathloop"), and MachineGames ("Wolfenstein").

Critically, Bethesda Softworks and its myriad games are multiplatform — the company creates and publishes games for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo platforms. Bethesda also has major games on PC, Mac, and smartphones.

Moreover, two major upcoming Bethesda-published games are initially exclusive to Sony's PlayStation 5: "Ghostwire: Tokyo" and "Deathloop."

In a bizarre twist, though Microsoft now owns the studios making those games and the publisher in charge of both, but the company told Bloomberg it will honor those contracts. Both games will appear on Sony's PlayStation 5 before heading to Microsoft's Xbox Series S and Series X consoles, Xbox leader Phil Spencer said.

After those two games, Spencer said Bethesda will launch its next major game — "Starfield" — on Xbox consoles, PC, and through Microsoft's popular game subscription service Xbox Game Pass. That list notably excludes Sony's PlayStation 5.

Beyond "Starfield," it sounds like major upcoming entries in blockbuster franchises like "The Elder Scrolls" and "DOOM" may also skip Sony's next game console. Spencer said Microsoft is considering platforms for each game on "a case-by-case basis," but it stands to reason that the logic behind Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition was predicated on adding a large portfolio of beloved game franchises that would be exclusive to its platforms.

In an email exchange with Business Insider, Wedbush Managing Director Michael Pachter said it was "unlikely" that Microsoft will publish the forthcoming entries to major franchises on Sony's PlayStation 5 or Nintendo's Switch "after 2021."

Across the last seven years, as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have gone head to head, Microsoft's Xbox has struggled to compete with Sony's PlayStation in terms of big exclusive games.

Sony's PlayStation 4 boasts a vast portfolio of critically and commercially successful games — including "God of War," "Marvel's Spider-Man," "The Last of Us: Part II," and "Bloodborne" — that can only be played on the PlayStation 4. Microsoft's Xbox One, on the other hand, only has a handful of such games ("Gears 5," "Sea of Thieves," and "Halo: The Master Chief Collection"), and they can all still be played on PC if you'd prefer.

Instead, Microsoft has focused on a new service named Xbox Game Pass, which offers a Netflix-like library of games that can be downloaded to your Xbox/PC or played remotely via the cloud on Android smartphones. Game Pass charges a monthly subscription that starts at $10, and includes all of Microsoft's first-party games at launch.

It is, in short, a tremendously good deal for consumers.

Xbox Game Pass now has over 15 million paid users, according to an announcement that also came on Monday morning. It has been the most successful of Microsoft's recent major pushes for Xbox against the dominance of the PlayStation. And it's this service in particular that Microsoft intends to bolster with the purchase of Bethesda Softworks.

"We will be adding Bethesda's iconic franchises to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC," Spencer said in the acquisition announcement post. Moreover, those games will arrive on the Game Pass service on the same day they launch otherwise for the next-gen Xbox consoles and PC — games like the highly-anticipated "The Elder Scrolls VI," and "Starfield," and whatever's next in the "Fallout" franchise.

And they probably won't arrive on the PlayStation 5.

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