The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Special Edition is on the brink of release and already the game is seeing a clear bias towards Microsoft’s gaming platform. The new version of Skyrim will be coming with a higher resolution and improved graphics. Perhaps more importantly, it is providing support for console gamers to create mods. This is in a similar fashion to the Fallout 4 announcement earlier this year. However, compared to PlayStation 4, Xbox One is showing to be the better of the two options.
In preparation of the game’s release on Friday, Bethesda is sifting through countless mods to approve in advance. Currently there are sixty-five mods for the Xbox One compared to only the ten mods available for PlayStation 4.
Popular gaming news site IGN points out that this is likely due to the difference between Sony and Microsoft’s acceptance policies. For Xbox One, mods are allowed to use third-party assets and install up to 5GB of data, whereas the PlayStation version is restricted to only official game files and cannot exceed a 1GB limit.
These weren’t in the plans that Bethesda had originally anticipated and it seemed last month that we might not even see mods coming to PlayStation 4.
Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive. We consider this an important initiative and we hope to find other ways user mods can be available for our PlayStation audience. However, until Sony will allow us to offer proper mod support for PS4, that content for Fallout 4 and Skyrim on PlayStation 4 will not be available. We will provide an update if and when this situation changes.
But it seems an arrangement was made betwen the developer and Sony after all, albeit quite a bit more restrictive than its competitor.
For a gamer, this speaks volumes to the availability of the title. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is commonly accepted as one of the more moddable games to date. Players on PC enhance their game play through more lighting updates, intense AI reconfigurations, and custom adventures to dive into. With the Special Edition opening up modding to console players, it’s no doubt that they’ll want to have the most options available to them.
So if you’re interested in playing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Special Edition with the most mods, the best bet would be to buy the Xbox One version. It won’t be available to play until Friday but you can pre-order it now on the Xbox Store.
