Todd Howard Is Aware Of Newfound Pressure At Xbox

Bethesda Games Studios director and executive producer Todd Howard understands that working as part of Xbox brings about new challenges. In a recent interview, he opened up about the pressure that comes with being a first-party studio.

VGC reports the Starfield director discussed this newfound duty and more on a podcast with computer scientist Lex Fridman.

“We’ve had a lot of success with the games that you talked about, but we’ve never been kind of the platform seller, you know ‘the game’ for a platform for a period of time,” Howard said. “And so, there is a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of responsibility there to make sure we deliver for everybody.”

But Howard added console exclusivity isn’t a new concept for Bethesda. In fact, he pointed out there are clear benefits now that his studio can zero in on Xbox.

“We were traditionally a PC developer in the beginning,” Howard explained. “We transitioned to Xbox [and it] became our lead platform–like Morrowind’s basically exclusive to Xbox, Oblivion was exclusive to Xbox for a long period of time, Skyrim DLC was exclusive. So, we’ve done a lot of, like, our initial stuff is all Xbox.

“So when we get into development and say we’re focused on Xbox, it’s not abnormal for us in any way, it’s been kind of the norm. And from a development side I like the ability to focus and have help from them, you know the top engineers at Xbox, to say we are going to make this look incredible on the new systems, from my standpoint it’s just awesome.”

Keep in mind this was just one segment of the podcast. Howard also talked about The Elder Scrolls 6, Starfield, and the meaning of life. Plus, he touched upon how Wolfenstein’s Indiana Jones game is a “mashup.”

Bethesda has been under the Xbox banner for less than two years. Microsoft purchased the company for $7.5 billion back in March 2021.