Bethesda's Indiana Jones game will be an Xbox exclusive after all

It’s been confirmed that Bethesda’s highly anticipated Indiana Jones game will be releasing exclusively on Xbox consoles, which isn’t really that surprising, to be honest.

The untitled Indiana Jones title was first announced in January 2021, but we still know very little about it. Specifically, it’s being developed by MachineGames (the team behind the Wolfenstein series), and Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard is the executive producer. What’s more, it’ll be a completely original Indiana Jones story, although based on the teaser trailer, it appears that it’ll be set during the original trilogy’s timeframe.

Here’s what we know about the untitled Indiana Jones game so far.

Given that Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media (Bethesda Softworks’ parent company) was officially completed in March 2021, two months after the game was announced, it didn’t seem like it’d be totally unreasonable for the Indiana Jones title to have a multi-platform release. It’s now been confirmed that this was actually the initial plan.

As GamesRadar+ reports, as Microsoft continues to fight for its proposed acquisition of Activision in the first court hearing against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines, revealed that Disney’s original deal for the Indiana Jones game would have seen the title release across multiple platforms, but the FTC says that this was amended after the ZeniMax buyout went through, making the title an Xbox exclusive instead.

“FTC lawyer questioning Bethesda's Pete Hines confirms that Disney had a deal for an Indiana Jones game that'd be for multiple consoles. Hines confirms. FTC says deal was amended post-acquisition to be Xbox only for consoles,” Axios’ Stephen Totilo tweeted.

It’s also been reported by The Verge that the Indiana Jones game will be a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass, which also isn’t too surprising, but it's certainly a nice bonus for Xbox users.