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

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zed said:
I think it bearly rates a mention in the business press cause Bethesda is not really a big game company (not in top 10), if it was EA, activision, take 2 etc then it would of made the news
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It was on Bloomberg and CNBC within a very short time after the announcement. It rated prime coverage, complete with Phil Spencer interview and accompanying live MS stock price ticker in the middle of the business day.

These stories are still on the front pages of their respective outlets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/micros...for-7-5-billion-11600697758?mod=hp_lista_pos5

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/microsoft-is-buying-elder-scrolls-maker-for-7-5b

It was more than barely mentioned.
 
Friendly reminder to keep things civil as part of an ongoing open discussion.
 
mrcorbo said:
It was on Bloomberg and CNBC within a very short time after the announcement. It rated prime coverage, complete with Phil Spencer interview and accompanying live MS stock price ticker in the middle of the business day.

These stories are still on the front pages of their respective outlets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/micros...for-7-5-billion-11600697758?mod=hp_lista_pos5

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/microsoft-is-buying-elder-scrolls-maker-for-7-5b

It was more than barely mentioned.
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I was replying to RobertR1, as like him I didnt really see it mentioned on the bbc or guardian (just had a search on both their news pages again to confirm and no mention)

then again they are sometimes a bit weird, the guy from black panther dies and its a news top story, yet the star of classic films like blood beach, tenebrae, war wolves, cannibal apocalypse etc john saxon didnt get a mention at all a couple of months ago when he died
 
jayco said:
People think back at the PS2 era and talk about money hatting, when the reality is that PS2 ammounted for 75% of the consoles sold that gen. For some 3rd party publishers it was just not worth the effort to publish on other platforms.

PSX also managed to get a lot of exclusives due to the licensing structure thanks to the CD tech, which was way more profitable for publishers than what Nintendo offered.
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Yes thats a lot different than buying off franchises. It was a business decision by the developers and a result of Nintendo's not so well handling of third party devs.
All these franchises that were originally only on PSX were free to be released on competitive platforms. And they did later. Unattractive decisions from competition made these games PSX exclusive (like the CD medium vs cartridges, better 3d capabilities vs the Saturn's, and of course the licensing as you mentioned)

Nintendo had a history of unfair competition during the NES era when they owned 90% of the market, and many developers werent happy with them. They sought for the opportunity to work for someone else.
Their contracts were binding the devs to make their games exclusively for Nintendo consoles until untitrust laws and competition became strong enough. The Master System couldnt compete simply because developers werent allowed to make their games on it. Genesis was also affected by it but a lot lesser, because it was released before Nintendo would release their SNES.
Namco had a court case with Nintendo during the 90s for unfair practices. Nintendo's stance was: We are too big for us to care and you will be forced financially to return to us. You wont last long with this case. Which is what happened and left Namco with a bitter taste. They retracted the case. The Playstation was a perfect opportunity for revenge by Namco.

But during the PS2 era we saw MGS, Resident Evil, Soul Calibur, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, Dino Crisis and so many other games on XBOX and GC. During the PS3/360 era even more saw their way on competitive platforms. These are franchises that saw their popularity grow on PS2 and then expanded everywhere.
This is a lot lot different from purchasing important IPs that were already established in pretty much every platform. MS is acquiring big franchises by simply buying them regardless of how they (MS) perform in the market.
 
Microsoft has to make acquisitions like this to survive in the market, it's how they've always operated. The only market they were ever truly successful, by their own work, in was the original PC market. And that's because the competition was limited. In every other market they've tried to dominate they have failed e.g. mobile, internet. When they have competition they have to buy innovation and luckily for them they have a huge amount of cash to spend on buying other peoples work. But they have to compete with Amazon, Google, Alibaba. Those companies are very good at innovating and bringing their own ideas to the market. And that's an area MS has always been weak in.

It's bad news for gaming if they take mature franchises and seal them away from a section of the market they once had access to, but it wouldn't be surprising for them to do that. But it's also good news because it now gives the smaller players e.g. Spiders room to spread their wings. The behemoths of these markets won't be there anymore, they'll be in the same boiling pit as 343. And the ones that survive will produce their trademark games.

And if GamePass becomes a thing then it opens the market for loads of cheap PC based consoles to spring up. You won't need MS or Sony or Nintendo to be making cool boxes when the market is open to that kind of growth.

I don't think in the long run that Sony is going to be bothered by this, I know I wouldn't be bothered if I couldn't play the next Bethesda game or the next iteration of Doom. If Sony continues to focus on making experiences that are unique to its platform the removal of the Bethesdas et al gives the smaller, more agile, studio room to breath then, in a way, that's for the best. And it also depends on what the talent at those studios decide to do, there's a lot more fallout (sic) to come yet.
 
I don’t get why people are even comparing this to the Sony Spider-Man deal. It was Marvel who changed up their gaming business plans, decided to move away from Activision movie tie-in games, and approach multiple AAA publishers known to make quality experiences to take on their Marvel properties, Sony being one and the other SE. Sony then approached Insomniac to talk about working on a marvel game, and Marvel literally let Insomniac choose which Marvel character to work on; Insomniac chose Spider-man.
 
Once again guys; there is no evidence of them sealing entrenched franchises from other platforms. The intent of MS is still very much about building their 1P portfolio to deliver content through game pass. They have already mentioned that they would be looking at titles as a case by case basis.
At the very least they have communicated enough to say outright that the goal is not to block a Sony users from having access; even if the content does indeed go exclusive.

on the other hand at least they have not been actively looking to block others:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1308054774902714369
 
MS needed a signing like this to be competitive against 1st party Sony. Plain and simple. It's a good move for them, there is no justification needed beyond that. Other thing is the price they paid, which is quite a lot and they will need quite some time to make it back. I believe some users here pointed to a rumor that Sony was in talks to buy them, probably MS panicked a bit and offered too much.

MS has been trying to create new IPs but it has failed a bit with some exceptions like Sea of Thieves. Meanwhile Sony has released this gen new succesfull IPs like Horizon, Ghosts, Death Strading, Bloodborne or Days Gone. They needed something to counter that, so they decided to buyout some great IPs, so what? Good for them.

edit: imagine if they hadn't done anything. This year they need to compete with Demon Souls and Spiderman. Next year with GoW, Horizon 2, Rachter and maybe GT7.

edit: and they managed to secure FFXVI exclusivity on console for a year.
 
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As a PC gamer, I'm relieved it's MS that bought them if anyone. They understand PC gaming culture better than Sony/Nintendo. But now they have to come through and show this is actually true by allowing full modding on Bethesda games, even ones that change binaries.
 
I don't see huge problems in doing paid exclusives. In my mind it's equivalent to contractors versus employees. Both are fine as long as nobody uses illegal or shady means to force exclusivity deals in existence.
 
Well that holds true if MS can resist playing true to form but I'm betting the future og GamePass holds an Apple Arcade as its ultimate acheivement...
 
Kaotik said:
Is this by any chance related to the SEGA blue Xbox stuff?
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https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2158595/
Shortbread said:
It was a general statement on what's being played out between MS and Sony. More than likely you'll hear something next Sony related about acquiring another studio.
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Also, I'm no insider. Nope! I just happen to know a few things surrounding Sony dealings and communications as of recently.

But, if people are wondering what's going on over at Sony recently (i.e., public communication issues, supporting PC, hardware choices/changes, etc.), it's mostly related to prior shakeups (see links below). From my conversations and understandings, these shakeups were mostly rooted in departmental bickering over the direction of the PlayStation brand. Lot's of heated discussions over it's traditional platform expanding beyond the current userbase (i.e., PC, PlayStation cloud-gaming on other console platforms, etc.). And the disconnect and miscommunications (purposely) relating to the decisions made surrounding the PlayStation hardware, starting with Pro.

Actually, Jim Ryan gives somewhat of a PR reason on why these shakeups occurred.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan attempted to justify the changes. “If we are to be successful, we really have to leverage the opportunities that globalization brings,” he said. He stated that the company had “streamlined” the “productization” of PS5. That means things like “the definition of the feature set, of the development and the implementation of those features.”

“The product planners are now having one conversation instead of three different regional conversations, where they needed to reconcile positions that were often conflicting or contradictory, with an endless process of iteration and consensus,” Ryan explained. “That’s not happening anymore. We have one conversation and we get on and do stuff.”
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https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/18/...nues-with-exit-of-third-party-relations-boss/
https://venturebeat.com/2017/10/02/...s-down-after-putting-playstation-back-on-top/
https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/7/2...hida-playstation-hermen-hulst-guerrilla-games
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-had-to-make-changes-to-deliver-our-ps5-dream
 
Rurouni said:
The thing comparing it to Spiderman is that I doubt people have attachment to the game prior to the Insomniac Spiderman. It is like if someone bought the IP for Superman game and make it exclusive (and good!), I don't really mind that (I'm not 100% okay with that) since I don't have(and I doubt most of the people have) any attachment to the previous Superman games. Attachment to the franchise as a whole? maybe. To the game? probably not. The situation is different with something like Doom, Fallout, etc. Like honesty, if you are someone neutral and don't like Sony making Spiderman an exclusive, you probably should hate what MS doing right now a lot more if they keep Bethesda existing multiplatform franchise/IP exclusive to their platform. But what I'm seeing is that some people are cheering for MS especially if they make those existing franchise exclusive to MS platform.
If this escalates, like Sony is suddenly acquiring multiplatform IPs, I'm pretty sure nobody wants that except for the hardcore Sony fans.

I'm sad.
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lol the activision spiderman game were huge back in the day of the ps1 and stuff. Spiderman even made it into tony hawk because of that.
 
I don't think Sony retaliate by purchasing any other publishers, maybe few individual teams. I can see them establishing bunch more 1st party studios. That takes long time and is risky because they all need to make brand new IPs.

The only danger that remains for them is for MS removing much more multiplat IPs from the open market. Millions of PlayStation users are already directly affected by not having ability to get new games from Zenimax studios.
 
everything i heard of sony buying stuff was lower level devs most wouldn't cost more than a Billion.

I said earlier that most of the devs in this sweet spot of purchasing (1-10B) are already bought are are not looking to be sold. I don't know if sony is willing to go upwards of 20B to buy the next tier of company
 
BoardBonobo said:
Well that holds true if MS can resist playing true to form but I'm betting the future og GamePass holds an Apple Arcade as its ultimate acheivement...
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True to form of MS from inception until X360 and from shortly after XBO to now? Or MS from shortly after X360 to shortly after XBO? Because those are 2 completely different management directions that MS took.

MS management from shortly after X360 launch to shortly after XBO launch is likely what you are thinking of. That was all a result of Lionhead and MS being forced to step in so that the company didn't implode and actually shipped something. And from there things just went downhill for their developers.

Before that, studios were basically independent with MS being almost completely hands off. And Phil Spencer has basically gone back to that style of studio management. There's someone else in direct charge of the studios now, but I can't remember his name. It's come up in a couple of interviews with the various newly acquired studios where the guy in charge has told them flat out what he doesn't want to know too many details because he doesn't want to get involved unless the studio directly asks him to get involved.

He's stated that he wants to be hands off because MS purchased them because of what they have a history of creating, NOT because MS wants them to create something MS wants.

Basically, just like it was for MS Studios prior to Lionhead forcing MS to get very hands on.

What will be interesting to see is what MS will do if one of the acquired studios ends up being a problem studio like Lionhead (mostly due to Peter Molineux).

Regards,
SB
 
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