Microsoft Issues Statement In Response To 'Redfall On PS5' Reports

Earlier this week, we were treated to a massive set of hands-on previews for Bethesda's Redfall, which looks to be another fantastic day one addition to the Xbox Game Pass library, arriving in May of 2023.

At the same time, an interview was published by IGN France in which Redfall creative director Harvey Smith appeared to suggest that Redfall had been cancelled for PS5 following Xbox's takeover of ZeniMax Media. This (unsurprisingly) led to a lot of different outlets covering the story, including us here at Pure Xbox:

Since then, Microsoft has been issuing a statement to various reporters on the matter, stating that the company "[hasn't] pulled any games from PlayStation". Here's a look at the statement in full, courtesy of Eurogamer:

"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."

"All of the games that were available on PlayStation when we acquired ZeniMax in March 2021 are still available on PlayStation, and we have continued to do content updates on PlayStation and PC. We have always said that future decisions on whether to distribute ZeniMax games for other consoles will be made on a case-by-case basis."

It's hard to tell exactly what happened with Redfall - the original interview seemingly pointed towards the game being planned for PS5 at some point in its lifecycle, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was already in development.

As Microsoft says, everything since the Bethesda takeover now has the potential to be an Xbox (and PC) exclusive, and that's obviously what was decided in the case of Redfall, along with the likes of Starfield and even Hi-Fi RUSH.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.