I heard Ryan McCaffrey talk about this yesterday. He thinks it is a "non-story." He said he knows Todd Howard well and what happened (in his view) is that Todd reflected the interviewer's statement ("it's hard to imagine") with his wry sense of humor. It didn't mean anything. It wasn't a signal that the game would not be exclusive. It was just Todd being Todd. And the original statement came from the interviewer, not from Todd Howard. Todd was just reflecting it with a dry or wry sense of humor.
That was Ryan's take anyhow. It sounded reasonable to me. I don't think Todd Howard would even hint that a franchise that will soon to be owned by MS would not be exclusive to MS platforms.
I'd prefer to have ES6 come to PS5, but I don't really care. I'll be getting an Xbox eventually to play Fable, Avowed, and Starfield. Whether ES6 is one of those exclusive games as well doesn't matter a whole lot to me. I'll play it somewhere. Probably for way too long.