Yesterday we reported on a story that Redfall was originally intended for a PlayStation 5 release until Microsoft pulled the plug following its Zenimax (Bethesda’s parent company) acquisition. The news came via Arkane Studios director Harvey Smith, who made the revelation in an interview with IGN France, saying,
We got bought by Microsoft and that was a huge sea change. They said, ‘No PlayStation 5. Now we’re gonna do Game Pass, Xbox and PC.
Now Microsoft has issued a response to this news, which unsurprisingly caused something of a stir online. In a statement to Eurogamer a Microsoft spokesperson said,
We haven’t pulled any games from PlayStation. In fact, we’ve expanded our footprint of games that we’ve shipped on Sony’s PlayStation since our acquisition of ZeniMax, and the first two games we shipped after closing were PlayStation 5 exclusives. We did the same thing since our closing of Minecraft as we extended the reach of that franchise.
Microsoft’s assertion that they haven’t pulled any games from PlayStation is technically true (there is no indication whether a PS5 Redfall was ever in active development—therefor MS couldn’t have “pulled” it, per se). However, the statement seems somewhat evasive in that a PS5 version of Redfall was initially planned at the least.
No doubt Microsoft is eager to quell any speculation the Redfall PS5 news might bring to its efforts to secure regulatory approval for its pending $68 billion Activision Blizzard King purchase. In its statements to Eurogamer Microsoft also pointed out that Bethesda has continued to do content updates for their games on PS5, such as Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo.
As for Redfall, the open-world shooter will release on May 2nd for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC. It will be available day one on Xbox Game Pass.
