Microsoft buying Zenimax/Bethesda

Hmmmm

https://twitter.com/imranzomg/status/1308054774902714369?s=20

I'm thinking the games as a service games stay multiplat but the bigger games might go exclusive. Honestly can't remember this big a deal happening in gaming though. A studio is one thing but an entire publisher is crazy.

Mitch Connor wrote: »

that bethesda seem to be remaining a publish as well, rather than that being folded in to MS, would indicate to me that they will be remaining multi-plat to a large degree. I would like MS to take the titles exclusive, but I think they will work off a base of 'You could pay $70 for ES6 on PS5, but $7 a month will get you ES6 and Starfield and Fallout etc on Xbox'

You could be right, but would Microsoft have paid so much for that, and even buying Zenimax rather than doing a Gamepass exclusivity deal with them if not to get full exclusivity of the games?

Its taken a while but Microsoft have finally gotten the checkbook out.
I was kind of surprised they didn't make this kind of move back when they first released the original xbox.


If this is their last purchase for a few years and try to organically grow their other studios this wont be too bad.
However historically that's not been their style and long term I think this deal will be very bad for gamers. Gaming (and to be honest all industries with MS in them) benefit with MS as a strong number 2, but they need to be number 2 to keep them honest. History has shown repeatedly that MS cant stop themselves from competing to going for an all out monopoly (with the needed dirty tricks) in an industry and with their unlimited cash pile (compared to Sony and Nintendo) it will be easier then ever.


With game pass they have probably the best way to gain a monopoly or at least to get such a lead that it makes game pass the default choice to such a degree that any other service comes a far second place, think Netflix to Amazon Prime Video.

All it would take is the one or two more big purchases, like say Take Two Interactive or even just Rockstar from Take Two, and then they are done.


I think Sony are right that its not a sustainable business model. I'd expect AAA games to require budgets north of 150m this coming generation, but with their cash MS can certainly carry it and their studios as loss making for a few years. Get rid of Sony or Nintendo as platform makers so they move into solely development like Sega have done, and then up goes the games pass price with no where else to go.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They did though, they bought Lionhead, Bungie and paid a record breaking number for Rare. Few others I'm forgetting. Also signed exclusivity deals with Sega.

While true they did buy the above, as far as I recall, at the time they were just single studios who were capable of some very good games, Goldeneye and Fable on the 360 stand out for me, but with all due respect to their size and efforts they were hardly powers in the industry at the time of their purchase.
I was expecting MS to be making these kind of serious moves far earlier, which is buying not just publishers but genre defining IPs .

It could just be that its only now that the MS board see this as something to really push for dominance in. after all the above purchases could probably have been ok'ed at Phil Spencers level, the Bethesda deal would require Satya Nadella and full board engagement and sign off.

Retr0gamer wrote: »

They were trying to buy Sega as well and were very close to signing off a deal before it fell through.

Yea that was more what I would expect. I hadn't heard that, so did a quick Google and see there is still talk about it.
Like I said originally, long term I see only bad things for gamers coming from these purchases.

Phil Spencer on Bethesda exclusivity: “I don’t have to ship games on any other platform to make that deal work for us. Whatever that means.”

Is it possible to recoup a $7.5 billion investment if you don’t sell Elder Scrolls VI on the PlayStation?” I asked.

“Yes,” Spencer quickly replied.

Then he paused.

“I don’t want to be flip about that,” he added. “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games. But I’ll also say in the model—I’m just answering directly the question that you had—when I think about where people are going to be playing and the number of devices that we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us. Whatever that means.”

https://kotaku.com/xbox-boss-phil-spencer-on-series-x-launch-halo-infinit-1845392984/amp?__twitter_impression=true