Disney says Indiana Jones Xbox exclusivity deal ‘made financial and strategic sense’

Disney’s gaming boss has discussed the decision to make Bethesda’s upcoming Indiana Jones game an Xbox console exclusive.

While the untitled game was originally set to come to PlayStation too, it was recently confirmed that it will be an Xbox and PC exclusive, and a day-one release on Game Pass.

The terms of Disney’s agreement with Bethesda were renegotiated after Microsoft acquired the studio’s parent company, ZeniMax Media, for $7.5 billion in 2021.

Disney’s head of gaming, Sean Shoptaw, told Axios: With “Xbox still being one of the bigger marketplaces for games, we didn’t feel like we were going to be overly exclusionary. We felt like it’s still going to reach a broad set of folks, and we felt, financially and strategically for the game, that made sense at the time.”

Announced in January 2021, Indiana Jones is in development at MachineGames, the Swedish studio behind the modern Wolfenstein games.

Bethesda game director Todd Howard, who is serving as executive producer on the game, and whose favourite film is Raiders of the Lost Ark, said of its genre last year: “I would just say it’s a mash-up. It is a unique, it isn’t one thing intentionally, so it does a lot of different things”.

The head of Disney-owned Marvel Games has previously claimed that Xbox turned down an opportunity to make licensed games, shortly before Sony struck a deal to make Spider-Man for PS4.

Sony-owned Insomniac Games has now made three Spider-Man games, including spin-off Miles Morales. The most recent, Spider-Man 2, became the fastest selling PlayStation Studios game in history, selling 2.5 million copies in the first 24 hours following its release in October, according to Sony.

The Japanese company said today it’s investigating reports that Insomniac has been the victim of a cyber security attack, after a ransomware group threatened to release allegedly stolen data, including details about the studio’s upcoming Wolverine game.