In one of the most unexpected moves in the video games industry this year, Microsoft has announced the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks which is itself renowned for video game franchises such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, DOOM and Dishonored. Microsoft reportedly paid $7.5 billion in order to acquire Zenimax Media, which makes this the biggest video game purchase in history.

"[This merger] allows us to make even better games going forward," Pete Hines, VP of PR & Marketing at Bethesda, wrote in a blog post today. "Microsoft is an incredible partner and offers access to resources that will make us a better publisher and developer. We believe that means better games for you to play."

Now that Obsidian and Bethesda are part of the same family, it raises the possibility of a sequel to Fall Out New Vegas. Interestingly, Bethesda planned to release two of its new games, Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, as timed exclusives on the PS5, rather than on the Xbox Series X/S.

In any case, are there any new games you'd like to see from this new acquisition?

UPDATE:

Speaking to Bloomberg, Phil Spencer said that the timed console exclusivity on Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo will be maintained while future Bethesda titles will launch on Xbox, PC, and "other consoles on a case by case basis."

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UPDATE SOURCE

 

[mightymuffy]

Massive news, and like Qtis says: Game Pass - was a big win before but now... well the missus won't play anything other than Elder Scrolls or Fallout (outside of the Switch) so that's money saved right there for me! Doom, Dishonored.... hell, judging by its place on the announcement page we're even gonna get Prey returning! First things first though MS, just tell Bethesda stop dicking about with the clusterfuk that is Fallout 76, let it die for Gawd's sake!

 

[Teletron1]

like i said they cant... there is a reason why you cant dump the 360 game disc and play it offline, the iso you download from the xboxlive service is not a 1:1 360 iso same for xbox ones, they need to recompile certain things on each game, becuase the emulator they wrote is not a 100% emulator, so each iso they need to modify certain files to make sure the game has no faults and glitches, so if they allowed you to just put in 360 discs and then play them without being moded, im sure most of the games would crash or have gfx glitches left and right.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Yes that I know for the games that they made work , but I’m thinking maybe the AI can recompile the game because it knows the perimeters ,wouldn’t that be fun
I’m hoping something is up with the way they will handle backwards compatibility and why they wanted to hold off until the Series X

 

[pedro702]

i doubt it at all, they just stopped because the xbox was selling like ass, maybe if the series x gets popular they will continue but if not they probably wont do much more imo.

 

[mightymuffy]

maybe if the series x gets popular they will continue

I think it might.... one thing that certainly on here seems to have been overlooked is that 'All-In' package: $35 per month will get you an Xbox Series X, plus Game Pass Ultimate for both that console and your PC. No saving up $500 for the console, and that price is half what you're gonna pay for a next gen game.... OR get the Series S and Game Pass Ult' for $25 per month, and maybe just stop buying the odd 1 or 2 [possibly overrated] extra games per year you'd otherwise buy on your PS5 to pay for it - amazing value really.

 

[FAST6191]

It's a real wonder that this didn't leak in the slightest

While it certainly came as a surprise to me earlier then Zenimax is a fairly small and private company (very little in the way of public documents, investor meetings/summaries) that is out of range of the day to day programmers and artists making the games (at best one or two of them might have seen someone come round to value things which would more likely mean their division is getting the can).
While private their main owners (a big private equity firm) don't seem to be facing any financial hardships such that they might be shopping it around, and frankly I don't reckon most of the games media is paying attention to that sort of level.
Likewise we have not seen any changes in leadership, big cancellations, too big flops (fallout 76 aside, and that is last year's news, and I don't know if it has yet been reasonably estimated to have made money even if nobody plays it).

Similarly MS might leak like a sieve when it comes to software projects but their acquisitions are often pretty tightly kept until the various parties have already got/given the nod.
I might have a read of their financial documents later to see if in retrospect anything might be made sense of there (I also imagine 7 billion is a fairly small amount for their pool of investing cash, though looking at the SEC filings then it is several times the 2019 year's total for acquisitions - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/sec-filings.aspx their earning projections would probably want to note such a thing), but 7 billion during a new console launch is going to be hard to pin down and probably won't say anything too easy to join the dots to Zenimax for -- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/acquisition-history.aspx for the eventual press release.

I would suspect the relevant monopolies and mergers commission/antitrust peeps would wanted to have a word but at the same time they don't have to do anything too public there, and it is not like there are not half a dozen other middling-big publishers out there.

To that end it is more or less "overheard in a bar", "document left on a train" or straight up inside source that would have revealed this one ahead of time.

 

[Xzi]

oh cmon they had good games this gen ...
dishonored, doom, doom eternal, wolfenstein new colossus , fallout 4 and even evil within was preety decent.

i wonder why people only talk about the bad games when they had alot of great games this gen.

Arkane, id, id, id, Bethesda, and Tango Gameworks. Bethesda only developed one of those games, and FO4 was the worst modern Fallout game until FO76 came along. Bethesda needs to be thoroughly re-structured, so hopefully Microsoft can do that right.

 

[Lazyboss]

Still getting the PS5, I have a gaming PC anyway so I won't be missing anything, and it's not like there is anything to miss, I only care for the elder scroll and fallout and I don't think anything will be coming in the next few years.

 

[Jayro]

This feels like Microsoft is afraid of losing this console gen yet again, and is snatching up more IPs to put into their game pass as a last-ditch effort.

 

[tech3475]

that's actually not the whole story. The reason Nintendo ditched Sony was because on the game cases it had to say Sony In a much bigger font as Nintendo and on the add on only Sony was allowed as branding. Sony were the same assholes as they are now

The reason for the split was because Sony would have had too much control for Nintendo's liking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_CD-ROM?wprov=sfti1

 

[pedro702]

Arkane, id, id, id, Bethesda, and Tango Gameworks. Bethesda only developed one of those games, and FO4 was the worst modern Fallout game until FO76 came along. Bethesda needs to be thoroughly re-structured, so hopefully Microsoft can do that right.

doesnt matter who developed what, they are all part of the purchase anyway.

 

[FAST6191]

A thought occurred.
ID have made a bit of a habit of open sourcing their old games over the years
https://github.com/id-Software
You can see many of the forks on https://osgameclones.com/

Surprising to some then MS are not exactly strangers to releases of old stuff
( https://github.com/microsoft has a few but is mostly middleware for current stuff), the old stuff is scattered all over the shop ( https://opensource.com/article/18/10/microsoft-open-source-old-versions-ms-dos https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/ for a recent one https://www.techspot.com/news/74084-microsoft-releases-source-code-legacy-windows-file-manager.html ) but a lot of it rather later in the day (for comparison there doom 3 was 2004, 2011 saw source, the recent qwbasic was first dropped 32 years ago and replaced 29 years ago), and often (but not always) of the "look but don't touch" variety.

Now in the case of ID they have an incentive for it -- I am sure at least one of you bought Doom again to get a wad to use with a handheld rather than find your old discs or something.
Here I am not sure what it would really release; not present are a few other doom clones, doom RPG and the other mobile phone RPG games, Quake Live I am sure everybody is clamouring for, Doom 2016 eventually maybe and the one I am shocked nobody has mission impossibled their way into the vault for, by which I mean Rage (they evenmade a sequel last year don't you know?).

doesnt matter who developed what, they are all part of the purchase anyway.

But if Bethesda are the sprinkling of shit on the otherwise golden crown, the weight around their neck and so on and so on then that is what most are getting at. If we are doing investor talk then toxic assets and liabilities.

 

[Hambrew]

yup they're never coming to Linux

 

[The Frenchman]

At 7.5 Billion you don't want 50 million people potentially buying your games, you want 200/300 million people. Microsoft is doing power moves like these since Mojang, they put big money towards becoming not only the place offering the best deal with Gamepass but also a full blown publisher, I remember them talking about the will to push gamepass onto other platforms like the Switch (ultimately PS too) they know they are not taking the console market ever. They are building their Video Game empire in an other way. In a sense not too differently than Nintendo (at the same time with a completely different way) they are doing things differently. No more do they try being the other Sony, no longer do they try playing that game. They will likely keep games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout multiplatform (like they did with Minecraft) and then keep some new IP coming from Zenimax's wide array of devs. Like Arkane, I wouldn't be surprised to see exclusive from them in the future.

Sony's strenght is exclusives, Microsoft tried that, they could have succeeded but their user base is not looking for that, it seems MS stopped chasing that dog. Good for them. They are buying lots of studios and we know they shut a good amount in the past too so my hope is that they don't push devs to make more games more quickly to recoup and burn studios. Like EA did.

It'll be an interesting decade!

 

[HarveyHouston]

While interesting, I don't think I've ever played any games from Bethesda, but the only game I've played from one of ZeniMax's other divisions is Commander Keen. Other than that, this really isn't a big deal.

 

[TheCasualties]

Didn't see this coming either. All I can say is I hope this brings better QA. And maybe another Dishonored (even though the series is "done") or Prey game, just want something new with those fun powers and stealth gameplay.

 

[AkiraKurusu]

What good is this? Bethesda's known for developing bug-riddled games, and the last game they developed - Fallout 76 - all but obliterated its reputation.
Bethesda's garbage; it's the subsidiaries, like id software, that are worth buying. Why not just buy them?

 

[notimp]

First MS closes down first party studios, because who needs them, we'll win on third party content (the bestest COD dudebro mashine ever!) then they buy new ones... Ah strategy....

Outside of Doom Bethesda was on the verge of not mattering anymore though. Elderscrolls VI has been indefinitely delayed for a reason... Publishing efforts led to them being bought by MS, so must have been very successful...

While CDPR scaled up detail level, Bethesda scaled it down three generations in a row. Their animation system is pre last gen, their fans do better work than they do...

Good luck?

Also, Tod 'we invested big in mobile gaming' Howard still runs the ship for a few years, yes?

edit: That guy:

I was dubious Xbox Morrowind would be worth the time, somewhat on a technical level, but more so from taking a hardcore RPG and moving it from a PC desktop experience to a controller-and-sofa experience. If we made it work, would people want it?

Such a nose for the trends..

src: https://bethesda.net/de/article/4IwKWIj174Cb2QNTTtBAEb/todd-howard-on-joining-xbox

 

[Deleted User]

Nonsense. If you don't have a port of Skyrim, you may as well not even make a game console.

Tetris
Resident Evil 4
Street Fighter 2
Skyrim
Minecraft
if your console doesnt have a port of them, can it be called such?

 

[notimp]

At 7.5 Billion you don't want 50 million people potentially buying your games, you want 200/300 million people. Microsoft is doing power moves like these since Mojang, they put big money towards becoming not only the place offering the best deal with Gamepass but also a full blown publisher, I remember them talking about the will to push gamepass onto other platforms like the Switch (ultimately PS too) they know they are not taking the console market ever. They are building their Video Game empire in an other way.

The way Epic does on Apple (iOS)?

 

[RedHunter]

Still getting the PS5, I have a gaming PC anyway so I won't be missing anything, and it's not like there is anything to miss, I only care for the elder scroll and fallout and I don't think anything will be coming in the next few years.

You know right ps5 games will come to pc too at some point?