Bethesda pushing for Elder Scrolls Online without Xbox Live Gold fees
If you want to play online games on Microsoft's Xbox One console, you'll need to pony up the cash required for an Xbox Live Gold subscription. This small sticking point means that free-to-play games aren't necessarily free-to-play (a point lamented by Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi) and that subscription-based games like The Elder Scrolls Online will have their sub cost increased by the monthly cost of Gold.
Bethesda's Pete Hines is aware that Xbox One players may not necessarily want to eat a $14.99 per-month subscription fee in addition to the fees associated with Xbox Live Gold, revealing that work is going on behind the scenes to make TESO exempt from the Gold requirement.
We have been in talks with Microsoft about that very thing, and seeing whether or not there's any room to change their minds about that for folks who are only playing The Elder Scrolls Online and don't want to pay for an Xbox Live Gold subscription just to play The Elder Scrolls Online. The answer right now is that's the way it works, but it's something that we're aware of and we keep pushing on to see if there's something that can be done.
Though we've seen no explicit information on whether a PS Plus subscription will be required for PS4 Elder Scrolls Online players, Sony has previously mentioned that Plus requirements will be "the publisher's decision."
