Microsoft is buying Zenimax/Bethesda for $7.5 billion

[Zakaryy]

The price they're buying for is incredibly huge.. I just don't understand.
Disney bought Lucasfilms for $4b in 2012. If you think about how big of a franchise Star Wars is.

What are Microsoft up too? I feel like a lot of that money was wasted

[Izzyfurious]

The price they're buying for is incredibly huge.. I just don't understand.
Disney bought Lucasfilms for $4b in 2012. If you think about how big of a franchise Star Wars is.

What are Microsoft up too? I feel like a lot of that money was wasted

Isn't it obvious at this point? the whole reason they are buying these mega publishers is because they want to have bigger competitor's at the middle of this next gen against sony. They already know at the start sony has already won it, so by doing this strategy. They have the really big names that even sony will have to really up their game to still keep winning against.

[Zakaryy]

Isn't it obvious at this point? the whole reason they are buying these mega publishers is because they want to have bigger competitor's at the middle of this next gen. They already know at the start sony has already won it, so by doing this strategy. They have the big names that even sony will have to really up their game to still keep winning.

And Bethesda/Zenimax are gonna help put them on top of Sony and other competitors? I don't think

There's nothing obvious about this. With the price they paid, they could've bought out more publishers. If this is futureproofing for them, it's gonna take years for any kind of effect.

[Izzyfurious]

And Bethesda/Zenimax are gonna help put them on top of Sony and other competitors? I don't think

There's nothing obvious about this. With the price they paid, they could've bought out more publishers. If this is futureproofing for them, it's gonna take years for any kind of effect.

Yeah they won't help them, but microsoft thinks otherwise. Hence they baught them. Thats the point, those of us who believes MS will just get blown out of the water even with these acquisitions. MS wants to prove our cynicalness wrong. Thus my point.

[Onikaroshi]

It's a win for me honestly, I usually only play single player games once except for under very certain circumstances, so having bethesda games on gamepass is awesome :P

[Unlimited Power]

I feel like Microsoft has been fairly consumer friendly in recent years, so I'm looking forward to what they'll do with the Bethesda IPs. Hopefully they'll prevent shitty stuff like Fallout76, Wolfenstein Youngblood etc. And even if we do get timed exclusivity for some of their releases, I feel like that'll primarily be targeted at Sony, so I'm confident that it won't affect PC gaming anyway.

Also tremendously increases the value of the Xbox game pass imo, and it was already looking like a fairly good deal with game streaming included for $15 a month.

[kaelleria]

Yeah they won't help them, but microsoft thinks otherwise. Hence they baught them. Thats the point, those of us who believes MS will just get blown out of the water even with these acquisitions. MS wants to prove our cynicalness wrong. Thus my point.

You're not really understanding the implications of a service like Gamepass. They have 15m subscribers right now... Before the Zenimax announcement.

Each of those subscribers are paying a minimum of $10/month. Some are paying $15/month.

Eventually the 23 studios they have will be producing a steady stream of high quality content that will go on GamePass. Subscriber growth is going to skyrocket (it's already started with 50% growth in 5 months). They're betting they can capture an even larger segment than their ~30m XBL gold subscriptions via game pass by being a Netflix type service. Think of how much cash they'll be making per month with 40-50m subscribers?

[Zogarth]

Todd doesn't sell anything. He's in a third tier company with those above him telling him what to make and how fast to make it.

Everyone knows it was sold because Todd showed up to the door of Bill Gates and made him buy it along with two copies of Skyrim: Special Edition. In fact, statistics show that 43% of all skyrim sales post-launch were made by Todd breaking into people's houses, stealing 30 bucks, and then leave another copy of the game on their kitchen counter.

[zEmini]

I know personally that the Doom Franchise will be on every platform possible. That is a big part of Id's philosophy and no buy out will change that.

[Edge-]

The price they're buying for is incredibly huge.. I just don't understand.
Disney bought Lucasfilms for $4b in 2012. If you think about how big of a franchise Star Wars is.

What are Microsoft up too? I feel like a lot of that money was wasted

Minecraft was a $2B acquisition, for context.

Bethesda is huge. It's not just the games, which make absurd amounts of money (IIRC Skyrim alone is well over $1B in revenue for the game itself, which it reached in 2016), but for the IP's and the related merchandising etc. They own some of the biggest IP's in gaming now - Elder Scrolls, Doom, Fallout, Wolfenstein - those are all their babies now. That's huge potential for everything from games to movies/shows to more toys and clothing etc. etc. etc.

Acquisitions are long-term deals, and they're very likely not expecting to recoup the costs and start making money any time in the near future.

- - - Updated - - -

I know personally that the Doom Franchise will be on every platform possible. That is a big part of Id's philosophy and no buy out will change that.

We hope. id's philosophy doesn't matter to its new owners if they don't care for it. If they dictate that a new Doom is Xbox exclusive or that it will be a timed exclusive/have exclusive content, id's gonna do it.

I doubt it'll happen immediately to avoid backlash, especially since there's likely no Doom game coming for a while given the recent release of Eternal.

[Clone]

Would this force Sony to do more PC releases to be more competitive? If so I'd consider this a good thing.

[MakeMeLaugh]

It's like you guys keep forgetting this is Microsoft we are talking about. They can play the long term game better than anyone else thanks to all that money they have.

[kail]

you guys talk about exclusivity, when it's a matter of propaganda
corporation buys out a lot of beloved titles to force their techno-lord agenda

Could someone translate this?

[kaelleria]

To put this into perspective - This is Microsoft's first party studio lineup now

[Strawberry]

Microsoft most likely did this because their Xbox exclusives are not as good and popular as Sony PS.
Now, Microsoft did say that they will honor the currently planned Playstation exclusives but in the future, it will be on game to game basis.
Expect Fallout and Elder Scrolls to come only on Xbox and PC, haha.
As a PC gamer who also is going to own PS5, this does not bother me much, but it gotta suck if you're a fan of those games and game exclusively on PS5 (no one here most likely).

[tikcol]

Entire paragraph can summarise your response but the bolded part is just pure gold and proves my point.

Users don't have responsibility on it. There are multiple reasons why games don't run that well in Linux.

Users not playing games that crash every minute, with low fps or that don't start at all isn't a valid reason.

It's not as simple as Linux becoming better at running the games either. It's actually mostly the games not being optimized for it.

A gamer doesn't want to protest by having a bad experience while playing a game after work. He wants to play the fucking game hassle free.

[Djuntas]

Straight up cash. They had $136b cash on hand in June. They could do this a few more times if they so desired.

Powered by Azure o.o Jesus. To much money in the cloud and our data.

[Egomaniac]

i don't consider greed a good reason. exclusives are meant to drive competition to bankruptcy through a lack of support. not because their product is better. also, i'm going for a business management degree so that would explain why i phrased it so well. i know how these people think.

I've always wondered why it's "greedy" for video game companies to have exclusives...but it's fine in every other market. People didn't call HBO "greedy" by keeping Game of Thrones as an "HBO exclusive".

[Lahis]

Just when we thought Todd couldn't find any more ways to sell Skyrim...

Sign to Game Pass and you will be buying Skyrim again every month.

[Serpha]

Users don't have responsibility on it. There are multiple reasons why games don't run that well in Linux.

Users not playing games that crash every minute, with low fps or that don't start at all isn't a valid reason.

It's not as simple as Linux becoming better at running the games either. It's actually mostly the games not being optimized for it.

A gamer doesn't want to protest by having a bad experience while playing a game after work. He wants to play the fucking game hassle free.

That is horseshit. You can handpick people who have problems with crashes and it's mostly AMD cards, low fps, maybe some obscure game that someone is trying to run in Wine. God forbid you run a game 19th 100 fps instead of 110. Playing hassle free? How do BSOD and Windows update self restarts and Windows deleting you files treating you? What's that? Hyperbole? Yah it goes both ways.
Users don't have resposibility on what? Making an effort? No you don't have to, nobody is saying you have to.