With the official completion of the Zenimax Media acquisition made by Microsoft, the Xbox company now welcomes Bethesda as a full subsidiary for the video game division. With that brings exclusive marketing rights to future properties of the firm alongside introducing new IPs that will be unique to the platform – at least based on a case-by-case basis, Microsoft shared previously.
Already, two announcements were made on behalf of Bethesda which directly benefits the Xbox firm. In that, Starfield from Bethesda Game Studios alongside Redfall of Arkane Studios are both to be on the way for the Xbox Series consoles exclusively. Much so that Microsoft had to continuously reiterate on the announcement later on against unconfirmed speculation.
With Starfield being the newest IP for Bethesda in the past two decades to work on alongside the shift to next-generation hardware, the release will be the biggest and most ambitious yet for the developer. From Todd Howard, he confirms that the dialogue lines for the game nearly overtakes both Fallout 4 & The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim combined. You can view the segment from the Tokyo Game Show livestream below:
“Next year, we have our new gaming universe in over 25 years coming out with Starfield, a game we’ve dreamt of playing. It’s a role-playing game where you’ll answer our greatest mysteries,” Howard shares. “And happy to tell you, yes, it’s going to be fully translated and voiced, Japanese: it’s our largest translation ever. Over 300 actors and over 150,000 lines of dialogue.”
Bethesda shows to be the key to Microsoft’s venture into Japan and the announcement for Starfield shows to further illustrate the ambition. Previously, Xbox head Phil Spencer commented on his desire to further speak with Tango Gameworks to bring more presence for Xbox in Japan.
Elsewhere during the livestream, Tango Gameworks’ Shinji Mikami references the team already pursuing the next project at the developer. In that, he discloses that The Evil Within 2 John Johannes is working on a new IP. You can read the full report by heading here.
Are you interested to see how expansive Starfield will be when it launches?
Starfield is to ship on November 11, 2022 for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
