Microsoft has announced plans to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in cash.
With the addition of Bethesda, Microsoft will grow from 15 to 23 creative studio teams and will be adding Bethesda’s iconic franchises to Xbox Game Pass. This includes Microsoft’s intent to bring Bethesda’s future games into Xbox Game Pass the same day they launch on Xbox or PC, like Starfield.
Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft, said:
“Gaming is the most expansive category in the entertainment industry, as people everywhere turn to gaming to connect, socialize and play with their friends. Quality differentiated content is the engine behind the growth and value of Xbox Game Pass—from Minecraft to Flight Simulator. As a proven game developer and publisher, Bethesda has seen success across every category of games, and together, we will further our ambition to empower the more than three billion gamers worldwide.”
Phil Spencer, executive vice president of Gaming at Microsoft, added:
“This is an awesome time to be an Xbox fan. In the last 10 days alone, we’ve released details on our two new consoles which go on pre-order tomorrow, launched cloud gaming in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and now we’re making another investment in the most critical part of our strategy: the games. Generations of gamers have been captivated by the renowned franchises in the Bethesda portfolio and will continue to be so for years to come as part of Xbox.”
The planned acquisition includes publishing offices and development studios spanning the globe with over 2,300 employees, including Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios. Bethesda’s critically acclaimed and best-selling franchises include The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, DOOM, Quake, Wolfenstein, and Dishonored, among others.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Sony got Deathlooped.
Excellent acquisition!
Unfortunately, Zenimax’s leadership and structure will remain unchanged after the acquisition. Robert Altman will still be in charge and BGS will continue to deteriorate. Hopefully Microsoft can get rid of him at some point. All in all, good move by Microsoft. They’ve purchased a company with studios that have huge mindshare, but they need to get BGS making quality games.
” we will further our ambition to empower the more than three billion gamers worldwide.””
with microtransactions and broken on release games.
also i got to say it, this gen was trash, ps4 had 3 good games, uncharted 4, spiderman and the last one is a toss between infamous and ghost of weebishuma. Bloodborne is borring, horizone is super borring, both are gonna be on pc, rumors say bloodborne is coming. Daddy of war is not god of war and last of us 2 is cringe.
Xbone has no exlusives apart from halo 5 which is an abomination that should not exist in this world, so they can keep it and you can emulate bayonetta 2 and zelda, the only good exlusive left is astral chain.
Why should i bother with next gen again? Pc it is, as long as ms releases those games on pc.
MSFS2020 has MTX galore? Funny I missed that
I also lost all hope on the entire media industry. i only play old games.
same
there was some black developer on twitter gloating that all games will now have black characters because no one cares about you white gamer dudes.
He spelled industry and characters wrong and the game he is making is a mobile windows chrome dinosaur jumping obstacles because your internet is down.
Burn it down man, so many talentless hacks.
None of those are good, the only good PS4 games were Blooborne and Gravity Rush 2 and nobody who owns those consoles even bought it because they were too busy hyping The Trans of US 2.
i remember mathewmatosis pointing out that sony did not adevrtize that game at all because sony is now in california and hates japan.
They advertise what makes them money, and right now their fanbase consists of hype driven movie autists that barely play any videogames outside FIFA and COD.
Gravity Rush 2 is a innovative 3D platformer by Project Siren, same devs of the Siren Series, same devs of Team Silent of the Silent Hill series.
The average Sony owner would be motion sick before even starting the game
Plan? It’s dealt already, for $7.5 billions
Funny thing, 2 years ago, MS hardly had handful of studios.
Now they’ve too many to count.
They might even forget a studio or two during an event.
Phil Spencer: ” … and that’s what is coming from our plethora of studios … wait, what? We got two more reveals? Who’s making them? We even own them?” .
If this means all future games from all those studios become marvels of tech and optimization leveraging DX12/Vulkan, good.
Oh you mean like how the new Flight Simulator is leveraging Vulkan / DX12?
Hopefully that gets corrected sooner rather than later.
As long as I still get DOOM games released on Steam, I’ll be happy.
R.i.P. Doom. Windows store is worst than Epic Store.
All there games come to Steam anyway I don’t see what the big deal is.
No one can predict the future, and i don’t trust this people.
Halo MCC, Microsoft flight simulator are both 9n steam currently and still being updated regularly. You can even pre-order Halo infinite on steam. So… I’m pretty sure Bethesda games will be on steam also.
Nice Job Microsoft glad to hear this good news.
Nice! Just what gaming could use. MORE consolidation! Because having LESS independent developers and publishers, is great for the industry.
Ahhaha nothing to add man….
It’s cute to see the lemmings celebrate this as a good thing.
I’m not exactly complaining as a Xbox Game Pass PC subscriber. ????
You will when you stop paying monthly or they discontinue the service and all “your” games suddenly disappear.
No different from Netflix, if I chose to stop paying the $5 or $10 a month for a gaming service will be because I didn’t see any reason for me to keep the service any longer. The way I look at is like this a game I would buy two games that come out in a given year it justifies the cost of having probably around 10 titles I would play that year and access or hundreds with MS, EA and now Zenimax studios.
it has been a great deal for $5 a month and I can cancel when I get bored. Next month it is supposed to increase to $10 and add EA pass and now Zenimax games as well, which makes it a better deal. It stops me from impulse purchasing games on steam that I never finish when I have an archive of unfinished games already installed from game pass.
“No different from Netflix”
I don’t use Netflix, I’m not a f*king idiot and actually like owning things.
Not only that but I can record sh*t from Netflix, I can’t do the same with a video game.
Games are not comparable to Netflix. You don’t watch the same movie over and over for years. Or at least sane people don’t. Meanwhile in gaming it’s perfectly normal to dedicate one’s “game time” to one game over several years. Imagine paying a subscription for that. The fools who fell for WoW or other MMOs don’t have to imagine. It’s idiotic to pay a subscription for a game. And this subscription service for predominantly singleplayer games will create sunk cost fallacy customers who keep playing every new game “so the subscription is worth it” whether it’s a game they’re actually interested in or not.
You, my friend have obviously never watched Big Trouble in Little China.
…nevermind
RIP modding, game pass titles dont allow you to make any alteration to the game files at all.
Wait what ? Why ?
to combat piracy
Let’s be honest Piracy is not a thing anymore.
What, you’re new here? Half the people on this site brag about being pirates. Every article about EGS the comments are flooded with them. Pirates are absolutely the reason DRM exists. Otherwise they would just save the money and not develop it.
And you can count regular visitors here with 2 hand.
True, but as a sample size it still scales up to a degree.
And yet here you are
Games now day are cheap and it’s up to you, play for free or pay.
The scale of piracy is so tiny, and the people who pirate would not have bought the game in the first place whateve the offer was so the Publishers aren’t technically even losing money.
There will always be pirates, as there will always be murderers.
DRMs will only get rid of your actual customers rather than pirates.
Is that why there are always people on here saying they are going to pirate a game?
Nope, that’s just a way to say that you will not support that game because X thing or practice involved in it. If your game is good enough, i will pay for it…but my standards are probably too high (playing old games made them) for the current state of games.
What the hell are you on about?
What?!
Devil’s advocate here, you are right in a sense, nowadays playing games is more of a matter of convenience than money. Some people prefer to pay for a game, just click and download at full speed and launch instead of having the trouble of searching for torrents, making sure they are trusted, download depending on seeds, updating the game if the update is cracked, etc…lots of steps that legit costumers don’t have.
So yeah, i would say that gaming became a cheap enough service with plenty of options (for some that’s an issue, just look at how many launchers a PC needs to install to have most of all the gaming experience) overall.
For me is not good enough yet, so i’ll stick to torrents for now.
That only ends up hurting legit costumers.
True, but it is still the pirates fault.
The people who pirate stuff (me included) usually won’t buy your game anyways, not on launch day for sure (thanks to the usual broken and unoptomized games that we are used too, specially AAA ones).
So they either pirate it if possible, or wait for a sale. I bought many games that i pirate at first, but end up paying because i enjoyed them and i think the devs deserve my money for it.
But you still pirated it and it was tracked (easy to do). Even if you bought it later the publishers still think it was a lost sale. As long as that happens DRM will continue to get worse and worse. Enjoy I guess.
Is free, of course i enjoy it, that’s the whole point of this hobby.
Like i said, the DRM will become worse and worse, but at the end it only hurts costumers…pirates just wait or move on (if the game is not cracked)
So what you’re saying is piracy only hurts paying customers. Since you’re a pirate, that’s you.
No? i don’t choose to put DRM that makes the experience of legit costumer worse…that’s on the publishers. There’s plenty of DRM that barely affects a game performance for instance, and you have the extreme case were you need an account and internet to launch a game (even in single player games, is ridiculous). DRM or not, pirates will exist no matter what…GOG exists too.
EDIT: if i have to blame anybody in the industry besides publishers and hacks disguised as developers would be legit costumers…their money allowed the promotion of practices that are common now and we all love like DLCs, microtransactions, day one patches, turning pc gamess into mobile games (transaction and design wise), Remakes and Remasters, is a long list and i could go on and on…but i think you get my point. Pirates are a very small factor in the scale of things that “hurt” this industry.
“if i have to blame anybody in the industry besides publishers and hacks disguised as developers would be legit costumers…their money allowed the promotion of practices that are common now”
It’s quite nice to see the blame where it belongs. Blame these people BEFORE the publishers. The enablers are worse than the abusers. The enablers could’ve put an end to it, but they didn’t.
And this is my logic too.
“I bought many games that i pirate at first, but end up paying because i enjoyed them and i think the devs deserve my money for it.”
A key point that sooooo many people conveniently don’t mention.
Also this. Pirating is a good way to see whether the game is worth your money or not. Let’s be real, games are expensive and most people can’t just go around “trying” whether a new game is good or not for full price.
I’ve hardly ever pirated any games, but I did Pirate Witcher 3 when it launched because I was so pissed about the downgrade.
Ended up buying the game and all of its DLC because that’s a game and dev that deserves it.
Also, I’d like to think that a lot of pirates are just younger kids who don’t have their own money to afford buying 60 freaking euro games.
No, did you know that a pirate ended buying the game if it’s good.
My biggest collection of bought games is on GOG, way bigger than on Steam, Ubi or EA by a wide margin…atleast on GOG i own the crap i pay for instead of rent it.
I used to buy games when cheap, and use/burn on dvd’s the cracked version with all the updates as a backup, believe me i still prefer to play the cracked version than the legit copy i have on steam.
Same, we are speaking the same language Mr Freeman.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/be74fa2a60a49c309b3a40696cd51b42eebf841c7a99c2c5674ed7aff5f26b96.gif
Um…. yep. I think you about summed it up. Nicely done.
You don’t say, Sherlock. In case you missed Game Pass is a rent service, not a purchase service, games come and go out of Game Pass as they see fit. Of course MS would need to cram in a DRM rigorous enough to prevent players from simple copying the games files out of their install folder, putting a cracked .exe and emu files on top of it and keeping these games forever.
Game Pass exists to catter to casual and low-income players who simple want to play all the newer games day 1 for a cheap price, not for people who want to keep these games forever, for that, they simple buy the game in another store. Did Halo Infinite or Gears Tactics being on Game Pass day 1 stopped them from being released on Steam too? Devs still have to make a buck, so their games can’t be Game Pass exclusive.
Way to miss the point of Game Pass completely.
No sh*t, Sherlock. In case you missed Game Pass is a rent service, not a purchase service, games come and go out of Game Pass as they see fit. Of course MS would need to cram in a DRM rigorous enough to prevent players from simple copying the games files out of their install folder, putting a cracked .exe and emu files on top of it and keeping these games forever.
Game Pass exists to catter to casual and low-income players who simple want to play all the newer games day 1 for a cheap price, not for people who want to keep these games forever, for that, they simple buy the game in another store. Did Halo Infinite or Gears Tactics being on Game Pass day 1 stopped them from being released on Steam too? Devs still have to make a buck, so their games can’t be Game Pass exclusive.
Way to miss the point of Game Pass completely.
If Bethesda removes modding (as we currently know it), then they are digging their own tomb. They already try to have some control over mods in consoles, dunno how that went…but on PC it would be their absolute doom.
It actually does lately. At least to some degree lmao
I was thinking not long ego how would they bring in the “service future” to be, this is one way that did not cross my mind, consolidation.
Buy everything and turn it into a service.
What independent developers?
Beth was a private company that is owned by an ex banker scammer that allows anyone in in the Board of Directors as long as they have enough money.
Bethesda is the one that boycotted their own games so that they could buy out independent developers, just like they did with idSoftware and Arkane Studios.
Your heart is in the right place, your brain isn’t
An AAA studio buying an AAA studio is nothing terrible, just par for the course, even moreso when both parties have been cozy with each other since 2002.
Pretty sure he meant that it’s one more company, and many more IPs, under a bigger umbrella now. Zenimax is no longer in control of their own choices and actions. Good or bad, that is true.
Confirmed, is official that the Microsoft ended up buying Bethesda!!!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43483ab4f9681b8031486f734b0f6f42fd64180f7c29c1686a8cd5727a1a4ba4.jpg?w=800&h=378
Its still unclear if Bethesda games will be Xbox/Windows exclusives but I hope so, this will get Microsoft back to compete with Sony.
Time to fire Howard
“You know, Todd, sometimes it DOESN’T just work!”
Bethesda was even more dead
Sony fanboys are going to be mad…
?
Their games will not go full exclusive, just saying
give it a couple of years and we’ll see.
They confirmed that their games will come to other platforms with case by case basis
They’re saving up to buy those $70 cinematic experiences like Spiderman, where the ‘gameplay’ consists of 80% cutscenes and the rest are quicktime events.
“PUSH X”
“good boy!…Here is a 20 minute cutscene”
I see this as a positive too. Maybe now Microsoft will actually make the Bethesda developers work to make things right with their games instead of making their fans do the work for them for free.
But can’t deny they got a pretty good payout, and now games by id software will be made with Directx instead. Framerates are going to suffer.
but dude they bought osbidian and inexlile, whose latest rpgs are woke trash.
Let’s not forget only Win10.
Huh, altough i liked Doom Eternal i understand why people have problems wiith it, and outside of the Doom franchise Prey is the only one for me that was any good. Maybe this is for the best, but i doubt it.
Looking foward to see of how this gen will turn out.
Meh, it’s like games are transferring from one circus to another circus. honk honk
And Sony ,just still watching in the couch.
Disney effect incoming…shame for Arkane..Bethesda may aswell be dead already.
Welp, im not a fan of the direction that Doom and Wolfenstein went with their last games…
Guarantee some big future titles will land everywhere except the Sony consoles now.
Their games won’t be fully exclusive, Xbox player only won Bethesda games on Gamepass not exclusive titles, the winner here is MS as a company since they’re going to take profit on PS sales of Bethesda games
Yeah they paid 7,5 Billion dollars to release games on PlayStation. They will force PS users to use Gamepass or Xcloud. Profit.
Yeah releasing games on PS5 and taking profit from the PS5 Bethesda game sales, that’s not a bad deal for the execs, it’s just that the player didn’t won anything interesting with this deal
I have not owned any console ever, I hate the exclusives but at least Microsoft releases all their games to PC also on steam. Credit where credit is due. My only hope is that Microsoft has better Quality control -> and forces Bethesda RPG division to release complete games. And that’s a win for players. But let’s wait and see if actually that changes anything. As for PS5 they could do 1-2 year timed Exclusives, that forces a great number of players to use Gamepass or xcloud serivce.
Fair enough
.. they bought the whole company… Not just rights…
They stated that their games will continue to be multiplatform, even Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo will be PS5/PC exclusives at launch
I sell shovels and i can tell you there’s always an eagerness to dig deeper.
Considering all the Sony fanboy tears, I see it as a positive
Bethesda games will not be Xbox exclusive tho, the tears will be on the Sony’s execs side not the players, and we still don’t know how modding will work with subscription based games and UWP, i hope the games will come to other stores too, it’s too early to see this as a positive move
i aint buying no game with uwp in it.
wow, not surprise though MS buying everything they can, and to be honest bethesda could do with the extra money for all the latest crappy bugs
Bethesda hasn’t published a single good game since the first Dishonored and all of idSoftwares longtime members are gone.
This isn’t horrible at all, just
Dishonored 2,Prey and The Evil Within are pretty solid games, Wolfenstein TNO/TOB are decent too
Am i the only one that think this acquisition is not a positive thing?
Why so many people like gamepass?! Sure its cheap and you have access to many games…but you dont own those games,they use the dreadful uwp,as time passes games will disappear from this service when they will have licenses renewal requirements something that wont happen when you own the game,you cant mod uwp games as far as i know and the cheap cost of such a service will kill single player games and only multiplayer games with games as a service mechanics will survive with such a service.
Screw gamepass and screw whoever defend this.
If you want to buy the games you still can. GamePass is only for those hardcore gamers that play everything that comes out, so they can save money by just getting a subscription.
It’s not like GamePass is forced on anyone. The heck are you overreacting for?
Interesting, i always considered GamePass as something aim to casuals, who will move from one game to another as long as is “the new and popular thing” without compromise, to the point of not even finish said games.
€10/month Game Pass for access to hundreds of games
VS
€80 per PS5 game
Sony is finished in Europe.
Subscription services push for service games, big budget AAA single player games are not profitable with 10$ a month, so publishers will feel the need to make service games that push the player to pay again and again each months to continue playing, while a classic SP game is finished in the very same month for 10$, i don’t know how you see that as a good thing, it’s dangerous for the future of single player games
Just a reminder, Sony is asking 80 euro per PS5 game in Europe.
That is $94 per game.
I am not insane.
I didn’t say Sony was doing better, but at least Sony is pushing for single player quality games, while MS is all about services and MP
I kind of had it with Sony’s ‘exclusives’ that are mostly ‘cinematic experiences’.
I looked at the Spiderman game the other day, all quicktime events with very little gameplay.
Half the game being cutscenes like Death’s stranding backpack simulator are not games.
It’s something, but a game it is not.
They have way too little replay value to be considered games.
They’re still better than Xbox exclusives anyway, with the exception of Forza series, and the Halo MCC which are just remasters, there’s no MS exclusive that worth buying an Xbox, and if you’re a PC owner the Xbox can barely serve as a stone
With this new acquisition, who knows, maybe the exclusive catalogue for Xbox will get bigger haha
This was a 3rd party publisher, the games that were planned were already coming to all platforms including Xbox anyway, and Todd Howard already confirmed that Bethesda will not do Xbox exclusives, all of their games will come on PS4, the only real winner here is MS business wise, their fans only won Bethesda games on Gamepass, not new exclusive titles.
The funniest thing being the temporary exclusivity of Deathloop on PS5 and PC while it’s not coming at launch to the owners platform lol
What.the.f. REALLY? 80 euros??
God damn Sony is gonna lose this gen so bad.
I agree with this. We’re already seeing this. With the event of game passes etc it’ll become even more obvious.
If games really get that bad with gamepass then people will choose the other games that do offer what people want.
It’s not about the choice, they’re forcing/imposing these games on us because they know that’s the most profitable formula for them, less dev budget and constant profit with paid content or microtransactions, all of that while Sony is forcing people to pay more for the classic formula of SP games, that’s some vicious blackmail happening here (pay more or play sh*t) that’s not a coincidence it’s happening at dawn of a new console generation
It’s a fact that game development costs are rising, so that’s no surprise there. Obviously companies would try to retain their profit margins. You could just play AA titles and buy the AAA ones on sale.
In the 90s you could try pretty much every game with a DEMO, a free trial. Everything from Unreal Tournament to Quake had free demos to try out the game.
About 15 years ago, the ability to try out games before buying them disappeared, under Sony’s lead. You were forced to buy very expensive games and were unable to try most of them.
Now with Game Pass being increasingly like Netflix, you can now try games again without having to shell out full price.
I am very happy I can finally try out games again.
“Now with Game Pass being increasingly like Netflix, you can now try games again without having to shell out full price”
Yep, but in the 90s we didn’t have Youtube too, and i can easily torrent a game i want to try, i can live without demos. Gamepass appears to be harmless on the surface but just think about it for a second, how can 400m dollars single player game can be profitable if players are able to pay 10$ and finish it in the very same month ? While a cash grab GAS, or an MP game with 4 times less budget will make the player pay again each month, publishers will feel the need to make more service games and that’s bad
no one cares, go somewhere else f4ggot.
I do know in Netherlands games have been 80 already when pre ordering even the regular editions, only afterwards things would go down to 70, so im guessing now it will be 90 then 80 post launch?
People like you are the ones that will cry the more when it becomes the “netflix” of videogames.
F4kcing cannot read before it ?
“Not like Bethesda is not Woke or Such”, Bethesda is an SJW hellhole, their gay pride logos, Wokenstien Periodblood, Dishonored gayblack woman for protag, Harvey Smith woking out on Arkane by making Antifasarkeesian and other Twitter woke activists in their studio… and MS is even worse, they have a PRIDE page, Gaypride and other flags in Gears 5 and their XBox garbage has LGBBQ stickers, Surface covers and crap ton are having “Woke Merchandise”, it’s far worse at MS than Bethesda, MS is a big corpo, which means maximum social justice policies due to corporate culture.
Meaning Id Software is going to be POZZED to hell.
Goddamn it.
Industry big M&A are very bad, look at Disney, EA. It creates trash and breeds cancer.
Bethesda has already changed in recent times since. DOOM Eternal is the only game that they released which was unpozzed due to id software, they manged to shove those LGBBQ skins though. But now with MS SJW policies it will be demise of id software, and even worse for the gaming industry to look into more consolidation.
You know, after reading some of your comments I’m starting to think you got lost on your way to One Angry Gamer and ended up here.
lol go Microsoft, go!
Sites are reporting it’s already been bought. Holy shi* this is big 0_0
F*K YEAH!
Best news ever!
As a pc gamer I absolutely love everything MS are doing lately,
This is crazy huge. F*CK these gready Dipshits Sony and consoles exclusives only. Every game deserves and should be on the best plattform in the world aka Pc 😀
Well LOL..F*CK this is good. Time to bury Sony 😀
Here is the low down of Microsoft’s mic drop in a hilarious troll
https://bit.ly/2RKpjr0
360 was better then ps3
ps4 was better then xbox one
I think xbox is gonna come out big this next round
last nail in the coffin for game industry, i think i’m just done gaming anyways.
I already fkin hate the windows store platform, it’s garbage.
If MS is going to exclusively release the coming games on there, I doubt I’ll buy anything, not to mention Bethseda games that are know for mod-ability and MS has it all locked down.
Starfield on Gamepass… it’s easy to make promises for a game that’s in development hell and will never come out any way.