Microsoft acquires ZeniMax Media (Bethesda, id Software, Arkane + 5 more) [2020-09-21, 2021-03-09]

[cheapchips]

Interesting question. Bethesda used to hold its own E3 show that was a good hour plus long. What happens now? You roll them together and go for what? A 3 hour tour? Skip E3 and just release a steady drumbeat of twitter posts and videos?

It's fine. They only ever had 5 minutes of actual content.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

absolutely if people want to leave, they can't stop them. But I don't suspect that MS will be actively shutting down studios

I believe EA currently have the monopoly on killing good studios. StudioKill *patent pending.

 

[Shortbread]

One thing is for sure, the 10th generation of gaming is going to be interesting... very interesting indeed. The 9th generation will be more of the same for the next 2-3 years.

 

[Jupiter]

Let's see how many games will come exclusively for Xbox. If Sony brings many exclusive games Microsoft should do the same. After all, the lack of exclusive titles has often been criticized. Most recently Microsoft brought FS2020 which set completely new standards and exceeded everything else by several generations.

In itself, it doesn't matter whether a game comes on Xbox or PlayStation. They are more or less the same. PC or console, that is rather the difference. Therefore I don't understand this "console war".

From Bethesda I know only few games. They should use the engine of Doom more. This is probably the best optimized engine available.

 

[London Geezer]

Let's see how many games will come exclusively for Xbox. If Sony brings many exclusive games Microsoft should do the same. After all, the lack of exclusive titles has often been criticized. Most recently Microsoft brought FS2020 which set completely new standards and exceeded everything else by several generations.

In itself, it doesn't matter whether a game comes on Xbox or PlayStation. They are more or less the same. PC or console, that is rather the difference. Therefore I don't understand this "console war".

From Bethesda I know only few games. They should use the engine of Doom more. This is probably the best optimized engine available.

I really don’t see the point of both making games exclusive to each platform. They would both make a lot more money by making their games available on both consoles (and PC).

 

[Shortbread]

Therefore I don't understand this "console war".

Brand tribalism is a thing...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I really don’t see the point of both making games exclusive to each platform. They would both make a lot more money by making their games available on both consoles (and PC).

This is the hidden side of console economics. Much money is made from platform licensing and taking a cut of sales, including micro transactions. The goal is to take the majority share of this by having the dominant platform and a way to incentive this is to have more console exclusives to pull people in.

I'd be really interested to see the actual numbers that predicate billion dollars R&D and sales number decisions but I believe it largely comes down to this.

 

[Jay]

CNBC interview

Not much to it, shows just how big this is.
Not just the corners of the net

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Is it just me or is Phil Spencer getting quite 'chunky' ? I don't mean to body shame, I've also put on a bit of weight since lockdown.

Also, Phil Spencer blinks a lot. Anybody know morse? Any hidden messages?

edit: surprisingly good/insightful questions from CNBC.

 

[dobwal]

I hope MS does something unexpected like publishing multiplatform titles as it does with Minecraft.

With Game Pass it can limit exclusivity to its subscription services and still support traditional sales across multiple platforms. Games like Doom, Fallout and ED can still have be available to the entire market but the Xbox can still offer exclusivity through its sub services.

I think hiding everything behind PC and the Xbox will diminish some of the value of these IPs and damage their brands. I want MS to be aggressive about shedding old console strategies and tactics and embrace the concept of maximizing the potential of its user applications and not maximizing the breadth of its OS and associated hardware.

I think doing so would allow MS to create more positive mindshare with non-Xbox owners and can do more to encourage them to become Xbox owners. Otherwise, MS can create negativity amongst those who believe MS is simply buying their favorite franchises and hiding them behind MS’s hardware.

 

[iroboto]

Is it just me or is Phil Spencer getting quite 'chunky' ? I don't mean to body shame, I've also put on a bit of weight since lockdown.

Also, Phil Spencer blinks a lot. Anybody know morse? Any hidden messages?

edit: surprisingly good/insightful questions from CNBC.

I was going to say I actually thought he thinned up a bit. He was bigger before or his choice of clothing makes him look slightly slimmer now.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I think hiding everything behind PC and the Xbox will diminish some of the value of these IPs and damage their brands.

Yup, this is how IP works. It would be like if Harry Potter was limited to folks with only Samsung TVs, it's worth a damn sight less because it's not as accessible. For IP to be valuable it had to be valuable/accessible/appeal to the widest possible market.

That said, Fallout and Elder Scrolls are likely big enough to pull customers into Microsoft's ecosystem.

 

[eastmen]

Remember all those rumors of Sony trying to acquire ZeniMax - that was true. However, something changed during negotiations. From my understanding, Sony started looking at other potential deals (sidelining ZeniMax talks) surrounding Warner Bros. game studios being potentially sold-off by AT&T, which Microsoft was also pursuing as well. But... we know how that ended. Anyhow, ZeniMax wasn't too pleased and here we are today... Microsoft completely grinning from ear to ear.

But, Sony executives are still talking to AT&T behind the scenes from what I hear... so there maybe some hope for Sony fanboys wanting ammo in the never ending console wars.

a big factor is money. From what i heard ms offered almost 2B more

Sony can make a play for a larger studio or two. It just seems like very day there are less options in this sweet spot of money. I don't think they want to drop much more than 5B on a company at this time as its about where the zenimax talk started to stall.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SNE/sony/cash-on-hand

Sony cash on hand for the quarter ending June 30, 2020 was $33.058B, a 39.25% increase year-over-year.

They can afford a major play if they wish. That is a significant chunk of the ready reserve though.

You guys are killing me (us).

Here is the thing. All of MS understands how big gaming is. Its one of the things that killed windows phone, its one of the things that keeps windows popular in certain segments of the world and with game pass they have more than just phones to bring it too. Their whole surface line up outside of the book and studio are incapable of playing many games. However with the x64 and arm64 editions of xcloud now you can play whatever you want. A surface pro becomes a nice 12.6 inch portable game system for travel. The surface laptop 15 inch becomes another great device to game on and so on and so forth.

those engines are as good as some of the games, 'cos of scalability. On Doom you add a parameter to use the frametime you want and the game alone upscale/downscale the graphics in order to play at that framerate.

I knew from the moment sony invested in unreal that MS would start to divest itself of unreal. Now they own one of the premier engines in the company and they can tailor it for their technology and services. Even carmack is interested in a collaboration . He lead some good work on getting the oculus link to work on the quest. I wonder if he could work magic on xcloud and get latency down even more

 

[Rurouni]

Let's see how many games will come exclusively for Xbox. If Sony brings many exclusive games Microsoft should do the same. After all, the lack of exclusive titles has often been criticized. Most recently Microsoft brought FS2020 which set completely new standards and exceeded everything else by several generations.

In itself, it doesn't matter whether a game comes on Xbox or PlayStation. They are more or less the same. PC or console, that is rather the difference. Therefore I don't understand this "console war".

From Bethesda I know only few games. They should use the engine of Doom more. This is probably the best optimized engine available.

Yes, Microsoft lack of exclusive has been criticized, but if MS force game sequels to be exclusive on their platform, that is probably the one most annoying thing that a platform holder can do. If they created a new IP, it is fine.

Also I don't understand some people expecting a response from Sony to buy a big publisher/dev. Is this what they really want? do they really want a large amount of games (especially the AAA games) only available on either platform?

Although I game on PC, thus not really affected by this news, I definitely don't want to see a franchise that is previously available on A and B platform suddenly locked to A only platform (especially super annoying if it is a sequel). I don't wish for Sony to do it just as much as I wish MS would let Bethesda at least still release sequel of games that was previously available on Sony's platform.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I knew from the moment sony invested in unreal that MS would start to divest itself of unreal. Now they own one of the premier engines in the company and they can tailor it for their technology and services.

Nothing screams delay like asking your dev studios to switch engines for political reasons. I just cannot see Microsoft doing this. This would be dumb as hell.

 

[Jay]

edit: surprisingly good/insightful questions from CNBC.

Yep, some relevant gaming related ones, not just that's a lot of money.

 

[AzBat]

I hope MS does something unexpected like publishing multiplatform titles as it does with Minecraft.

After the last round of acquisitions Phil said that they weren't interested in doing anymore multi-platform releases. Though he could have changed his mind with this deal. Who knows?

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

those AA type studios have been the majority of acquisitions for MS the past while. I think they specifically target AA sized studios as opposed to AAA ones. The cost return appears to be much more beneficial to them because they are looking to reduce spend on titles and increase subscriber base. Essentially these smaller AA studios can be funded for whacky projects that don't cost too much but provide a much needed lift to the service to eliminate the homogeneity of all games reducing to the same cookie cutter titles.

See Grounded for instance. Rare studios games have also been pared back in terms of spend. I think you're still going to see a lot of AA type (spend) titles like that coming from MS studios, and very few titles that actually line up and go toe to toe with Sony ones.

tldr; they want studios to have a title release every 1-2 years as opposed to 3-5 years. The former supports game pass better, the latter supports more traditional models.

your going to see a lot of both. Think of it like the Pixar Model. You work on a few movies and then get your chance to helm a short and if it does well you get a major movie. Its the same here. The smaller studios will make a couple of small AA games while forming new teams to continue making AA games but then the first team will move on to a AAA game if their previous titles were popular.

 

[Silenti]

I hope MS does something unexpected like publishing multiplatform titles as it does with Minecraft.

With Game Pass it can limit exclusivity to its subscription services and still support traditional sales across multiple platforms. Games like Doom, Fallout and ED can still have be available to the entire market but the Xbox can still offer exclusivity through its sub services.

I think hiding everything behind PC and the Xbox will diminish some of the value of these IPs and damage their brands. I want MS to be aggressive about shedding old console strategies and tactics and embrace the concept of maximizing the potential of its user applications and not maximizing the breadth of its OS and associated hardware.

I think doing so would allow MS to create more positive mindshare with non-Xbox owners and can do more to encourage them to become Xbox owners. Otherwise, MS can create negativity amongst those who believe MS is simply buying their favorite franchise and hiding them behind MS’s hardware.

If you wished to maximize your subscriber base and your profit, you could just go to timed exclusives for the big titles. Day 1 release on GPU (I hate that acronym, always read it as the obvious term it has been for 25 years?) and, depending on the title, release it for sale on other platforms after 6-months to a year. Maybe only sell PC copies through the Xbox store before it goes to GoG, Steam and Epyc after the above time frame. Anyone who has to have those titles "right now!" will end up a subscriber, or at least a purchaser of the title at MS's store, whereas players who are just not going to leave Sony (or will not double dip) you can still get their money later.

 

[eastmen]

After the last round of acquisitions Phil said that they weren't interested in doing anymore multi-platform releases. Though he could have changed his mind with this deal. Who knows?

Tommy McClain

Any contracted things MS will keep going. Depending on how far in the new elder scrolls and other titles are they could become xbox platform exclusive.

I've been telling you guys that MS makes the WRPG games that I like ... now they make more


Also there is one more interesting thing about Zenimax/ Bethesda that I haven't seen brought up