Xbox Survey Asks Users About Minecraft And The Elder Scrolls Exclusivity

Xbox Asks Users If They'd Like All Its Games To Be Exclusive, Including The Elder Scrolls Published Oct 15, 2026, 2:34 AM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. Sign in to your TheGamer account After shifting to a strategy where all of its games are available everywhere, Xbox has now officially reverted to keeping some of its games console-exclusive following the launch of Gears of War: E-Day. A survey sent to Xbox Insiders suggests it might not be stopping there. Xbox Insiders Asked What They'd Do If Big Games Went Exlcusive A copy of the survey has been obtained and verified by Windows Central. In it, users are asked where they would go to play various Xbox-published games in the future if they were no longer available on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles. The survey cycles through several Xbox properties, including Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Physint, the upcoming Hideo Kojima game that was being published by PlayStation until Xbox swooped in to save it when it was about to be canceled. Among the options users are given for each series are: playing the games on an Xbox device they already own, buying a new Xbox device to play it, playing it on PC where new content would still be released despite renewed exclusivity, or skipping it since it’s no longer available on the platform on which they’d prefer to play. The survey makes it clear that if this were to happen, the games already released in each series wouldn’t go anywhere. For example, you would still be able to buy and play Skyrim and Fallout 4 on PS5, but The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 would only be released on Xbox and PC. Even Minecraft Is On The Table The survey even brings Minecraft under this hypothetical umbrella, a game so big that people often forget it’s owned by Xbox. The Minecraft question is worded a little differently, noting that the game would no longer be available on other consoles, nor would those versions of Minecraft continue to receive updates should Xbox go all in on exclusivity. As noted in the survey, the only series Xbox owns that is guaranteed to be safe from any exclusivity plans is Call of Duty. Even though CoD is an Xbox-published series, it is legally bound to make each new installment available across all possible platforms for the foreseeable future due to promising that would be the case when jumping through the legal loopholes that came with its Activision-Blizzard acquisition. Surveys like this are pretty common, and just because these questions are being asked doesn’t mean we are on the cusp of returning to a world where almost everything Xbox owns will only be available on its own consoles and PC. It is most definitely being considered, though, and we didn’t need the survey to tell us that. The only places you can play E-Day are Xbox and PC, and the same will apply to Clockwork Revolution. If the numbers show that keeping those games exclusive forced people to stay on or join its platform, Xbox will surely consider keeping some of its bigger, and maybe even its biggest, games exclusive. Systems Released 2026 ESRB m Developer(s) Bethesda Game Studios Publisher(s) Bethesda Softworks Franchise The Elder Scrolls