Bethesda’s Indiana Jones game is an Xbox console exclusive

By James On Jun 22, 2023

Bethesda Softworks’ upcoming Indiana Jones game will be exclusive to Xbox consoles and PC, publishing chief Pete Hines said at Microsoft’s Federal Trade Commission and Activision Blizzard hearing on Thursday. The game is also expected to be available upon release on Xbox Game Pass.

Bethesda announced development of the project in 2021, just months after Microsoft announced its acquisition of ZeniMax Media (of which Bethesda belongs) in a $7.5 billion deal. That deal was completed in March 2021. Machinegames, responsible for the most recent Wolfenstein games, is developing the game under Disney’s Lucasfilm Games label. No release timing or platform information was given at the time. The new details about Indiana Jones’ platform exclusivity were revealed during Hines’ testimony in San Francisco court.

Hines revealed that ZeniMax’s original agreement with Disney would have placed the Indiana Jones game on multiple consoles. After Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax was announced, Disney had “questions” about console exclusivity despite the signed agreement, the FTC attorney added. The contract was later changed to make Indiana Jones an Xbox exclusive, Hines confirmed.

Hines later added that Bethesda had signed the agreement with Disney for the acquisition of Microsoft. He said Bethesda was an independent publisher that “couldn’t miss” as it “fights against publishers several times bigger”. He confirmed that Disney wanted the reach to be “as wide as possible” and that Bethesda felt it should meet that need.

After the acquisition of Microsoft changed that. Hines said there were several reasons for that change, including the idea of how many players it would bring to Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft and Bethesda are also trying to “reduce risk” to meet licensor requirements. Hines brought this back to a topic he previously discussed regarding the “irresponsibly big game”, with Bethesda benefiting by being able to support the game on fewer platforms.

Last year, Todd Howard, who will executive produce the game, called the Indiana Jones game a “bucket list” project. There’s no denying the popularity of the movie franchise, but there have been few Indiana Jones video games of late, other than the Lego adaptations, the last of which was released in 2009. That same year, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings was released on Wii and PlayStation 2.