News Microsoft purchases Bethesda Softworks in industry-changing acquisition

[guidryp]

Hmmmm.....
"Doom, Fallout, Elder Scrolls and more become MS properties in reported $7.5B deal"

Microsoft purchases Bethesda Softworks in industry-changing acquisition [Updated]

Doom, Fallout and more will come to other consoles on "case by case basis."

arstechnica.com

 

[Artorias]

Microsoft now owns Obsidian and the Fallout franchise. Time to repatriate and let the real developers bring that franchise back from the brink.

 

[sandorski]

Wow. Hopefully Microsoft does something good with those franchises.

 

[KMFJD]

angsty gamer nerds have been silent for the most part that i have seen, a few screams here and there but nothing major

 

[IronWing]

Will it tilt things more toward consoles vs PCs?

 

[guidryp]

Will it tilt things more toward consoles vs PCs?

Probably tilt things more away from PS5.

 

[UNCjigga]

I’m curious to know who ended up with Robert Trump’s shares in Zenimax. I don’t believe he had any natural born heirs. My guess is that his shares ended up with Trump Management (not Trump Org) which is the holding company he managed with Donald and his siblings. So it’s possible that Donald is getting significant gains with this deal... not that we’d ever know.

But he still won’t let Nadella buy TikTok...lol.

 

[ArenCordial]

Definitely a big move by MS right before X-Box preorders open. Fallout, Doom, and Elder Scrolls as X-Box/PC titles only is a pretty smart and aggressive. Its pretty obvious this gen of consoles is going to have a lot more competition from exclusives than the last.

 

[ArenCordial]

Microsoft now owns Obsidian and the Fallout franchise. Time to repatriate and let the real developers bring that franchise back from the brink.

Honestly if this happened, would it even be good? All the main writers of NV are no longer with Obsidian and if Outer Worlds was anything to go by....nope. Sawyer is last the big name that worked on it and he's not really doing as much hands on being the studio's creative director. You have Tim and Leonard from FO 1 and 2 sure, but again Outer Worlds was their project and was unexpectedly mediocre. I expected more considering the history of those two.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Wow, major coup by MS here. There are some titanic franchises that they just picked up with this deal and as a exclusively PC gamer I cannot find a lot to be chuffed about.

MS has finally gotten their head straight with just bringing games to PC through the Steam service (and hopefully every service at some point) without a bunch of middleware garbage.

They appear as of yet to have left their devs largely alone without any sort of dictates from on high (a la EA cramming MTX and MP into everything or Ubisoft apparently reskinning the same game 100 different ways).

As others have mentioned, if this means Fallout New Vegas 2 or Bethsoft games with less jank and more features right out the gate (or an altogether new engine maybe?) then I will accept it like mana from heaven.

 

[Artorias]

Honestly if this happened, would it even be good? All the main writers of NV are no longer with Obsidian and if Outer Worlds was anything to go by....nope. Sawyer is last the big name that worked on it and he's not really doing as much hands on being the studio's creative director. You have Tim and Leonard from FO 1 and 2 sure, but again Outer Worlds was their project and was unexpectedly mediocre. I expected more considering the history of those two.

Well Microsoft does own InXile as well who have done a good job with Wasteland. There might be another play on the horizon if they grab Interplay as well, they have almost brought together the whole team at MS. I can see MS taking the Fallout franchise off Bethesda and leaving them only with Elderscrolls.

Wow, major coup by MS here. There are some titanic franchises that they just picked up with this deal and as a exclusively PC gamer I cannot find a lot to be chuffed about.

MS has finally gotten their head straight with just bringing games to PC through the Steam service (and hopefully every service at some point) without a bunch of middleware garbage.

They appear as of yet to have left their devs largely alone without any sort of dictates from on high (a la EA cramming MTX and MP into everything or Ubisoft apparently reskinning the same game 100 different ways).

As others have mentioned, if this means Fallout New Vegas 2 or Bethsoft games with less jank and more features right out the gate (or an altogether new engine maybe?) then I will accept it like mana from heaven.

MS also now owns Arkane studios as well, this is a huge move.

 

[zinfamous]

My first response is annoyance and maybe a bit of anger....but if it leads to dragging Elder Scrolls and FO off of gamebryo, if anything else, then it will be worth it. (though wasn't that already happening, sorta?....just mostly same engine with a new name? the Creation Engine?)

 

[Zenoth]

The only thing that matters to me with the Elder Scrolls franchise is mods. If they temper with moddability of Elder Scrolls 6 (I.E., if somehow MS being the owner of the franchise means there's going to be no official tools to mod the game with) then - at least for me - it means the franchise is completely dead, period. And there's no other way to look at it. There's no way I would have played Skyrim past the 2013 or 2014 mark if it hadn't been for mods, same for Oblivion, and same for Morrowind. I don't bother with 'vanilla' Bethesda games since around Fallout 3.

However, if moddability isn't going to be affected, and if the PC version (at least) of ES6 will be just as moddable as Skyrim was, then this doesn't change anything for me at all and I'll still be able to enjoy another ES game for years after its release. And this potentially applies to the next Fallout game as well.

As for the other franchises, including DOOM, I couldn't care less even if I tried, no matter who owns them.

 

[ArenCordial]

My first response is annoyance and maybe a bit of anger....but if it leads to dragging Elder Scrolls and FO off of gamebryo, if anything else, then it will be worth it. (though wasn't that already happening, sorta?....just mostly same engine with a new name?)

I doubt it. MSFT has been pretty hands off with directing how the studios run under Spencer. I fully expect Starfield, ES6, and the next Fallout to be running off that.

The questions I've got from this are
1.) Will they start hiring? BGS has run with a very small studio for years and is part of the reason for the long periods between games. They have expanded in the last decade but I'm sure MSFT would be more than willing to fork over cash if they wanted to start hiring to bring titles out faster.

2.) How long before some of veterans like Todd Howard stay around before they say see you later, after this big payday. The BioWare Doc's stayed for what 5 years to almost the day? I'd expect similar terms for the industry. At this rate that means you'll see Starfield, but I would be completely unsurprised if Howard and some others were gone by the time ES6 hits. Personally not a Howard fanboy but for some people that will matter.

 

[Newbian]

Now we can only hope microsoft can save bethesda from imploding anymore like they have done the past few years and maybe actually upgrade their game engine sometime this generation.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Probably tilt things more away from PS5.

Yeah. Windows 10 and Xbox are both sharing the same software delivery platform. It's going to get interesting as Microsoft merges that space. They make no money off OS or consoles anymore. It's all in the software sales or subscription services....it's why they're pushing physical disks out as quickly as they can...they don't want a secondary/discount market competing with them.

 

[paperfist]

Excuse the ignorance, but what PC games does Microsoft develop? I didn't think they were that great at it. The ones I liked like Zoo Tycoon and Flight Sim they buried. Yeah I know Flight Sim finally made a come back.

 

[Borealis7]

as mentioned in the comments of the article in the OP:

Microsoft also purchased Obsidian Entertainment in 2018, putting the developer of Fallout: New Vegas and the owner of the Fallout IP under the same corporate roof once again.
and MS bought inXile last year. so...

Black Isle / Interplay reborn?

 

[Newbian]

Excuse the ignorance, but what PC games does Microsoft develop? I didn't think they were that great at it. The ones I liked like Zoo Tycoon and Flight Sim they buried. Yeah I know Flight Sim finally made a come back.

The issue is they own so much you kind of need to include what they also own company wise and such.

This has a good listing:

List of Xbox Game Studios video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[rivethead]

Honestly, the MSFT acquisition of InXile turned out to be a really good thing. They bought InXile right after the release of Bards Tale IV. That release was horrible. InXile won't admit it, but they ran out of funds for proper, thorough QA and released an awesome but extremely buggy game.

MSFT immediately poured some money into that project, it got some QA love, and six months later a Directors Cut was released with additional content, some UI improvements, some story improvements, and a much better running code.

From what I hear, Wasteland 3 got the proper QA treatment before it's release.

Bottom line is that MSFT showed a willingness to spend some money to make some existing IP better. I don't think many expected that.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Will it tilt things more toward consoles vs PCs?

Not at all. Xbox is almost entirely cross platform now. Buy the game, and play it on either the console or PC. They have Xbox game pass for PC too. As suggested, it will be more about denying those titles to Sony, and/or making them pay up to license them.

 

[quikah]

Excuse the ignorance, but what PC games does Microsoft develop? I didn't think they were that great at it. The ones I liked like Zoo Tycoon and Flight Sim they buried. Yeah I know Flight Sim finally made a come back.

All of their games are now PC games.

Halo, Gears, Forza, FlightSim, Age of Empires, Wasteland, State of Decay, Outer Worlds, etc...

 

[guidryp]

The other casualty beyond PS5, is probably a shift away from Vulkan, which iD supported.

 

[quikah]

The other casualty beyond PS5, is probably a shift away from Vulkan, which iD supported.

This is an interesting point. I don't think MS will force a change though, they have been pretty hands off with all their studios from what I can tell. iD has been cross platform forever, so most likely won't matter either way.

There were some deleted tweets by iD engineers complaining about the Series S memory size when it was revealed. Someone pointed out that Vulkan doesn't yet support Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS) or DirectStorage which is something the Series S relies on to get by with the lower memory size. Perhaps it will be a good thing, iD will push Khronos to add these features.

 

[paperfist]

All of their games are now PC games.

Halo, Gears, Forza, FlightSim, Age of Empires, Wasteland, State of Decay, Outer Worlds, etc...

Right, but their 'home grown' stuff has been console first for sometime now. They pretty much abandoned PC as a primary dev. Sure they eventually bring it to PC, but it's not their primary platform.

The issue is they own so much you kind of need to include what they also own company wise and such.

This has a good listing:

List of Xbox Game Studios video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That's kind of why I said excuse my ignorance. I haven't really been playing AAA titles in a while, mainly going for small dev work. Thanks, I'll look at that.