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

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They are only going to continue to grow via internal studio creation or purchases.

They also now have a pretty decent sized 3rd party engine that people license so they can really sweeten the pot. Produce a game for us on Game pass using the ID engine and we will even cover the first x amount of months up front on game pass sales.

Its going to bring a lot of content that will get more subs that will bring more content. They are in the mid 20m range for subscribers as it grows more and more devs will want on the gravy train

 

Agreed. My guess is that they want to buy 3-5 more studios and keep growing the internal studios as well. They are still playing catch-up to some degree as games take a long time to develop, but this 2nd half of the year lineup of Doom Eternal patch, Sea of Thieves APL, MS Flight Simulator, Psychonauts 2, Halo Infinite, and Forza Horizon 5 is really good 1st party output from MS, the likes of which we haven't seen before.

 

I know of 3 in the works dunno about others however.


If you think about it , its a smart move by MS in late 2022 or 2023 no one is going to remember how few or many exclusives they had at launch of early 2021. They will just see the constant stream of exclusives hitting xbox and will want to jump on. At some point if sony can't keep up and the titles MS is releasing is high enough quality they will start to grow the install base and be able to support more exclusives and day one 3rd party game pass games.

I can't recall the podcast could have been giant bomb or nextlander but someone said that Physconots (sp ?) had content pulled out of it and when MS bought them they said well you want to push the date back now and put that content back in ? If true MS could be doing this with a bunch of their content. Perhaps Starfield was pushed back. Maybe they had covid dev trouble and ms just pushed it a year to have it get polished and have more content put in. Like I said no one will care what content existed at launch and early 2021 once MS starts releasing. There is something new every month of the year including big hitters like Forza horizions and halo and they keep releasing games through 2022 its a pretty packed year so far.

 

Psychonauts 2 was indeed missing boss fights because Doublefine didn't have the money to put them in until they got purchased; Tim Schafer himself is the source for that too, so we can take it as true. Their absence absolutely would've been noticed. The game will be better for the acquisition.

 

Thanks for confirming. I had only heard it on one of the talk over e3 shows

 

Not to be all console wars or anything, but it isn't as if they have to worry about the competition releasing exclusive hit after hit right now either. Sony might have more next gen exclusives, but it's a pretty shallow pond in terms of real next gen content on both sides right now. Once Microsoft starts dropping hits, it's going to be nuts.

 

well that's the thing. As MS buys more studios or builds new studios the amount of games they can produce each year goes up. With game pass its a constant revenue stream that is predicable unlike game sales. So as subscriber rates grow and more stay in the subscription longer due to the constant stream of games to have the subscription for it will just keep snow balling. More and more 3rd party game releases will also come to it as they will want a piece of the 30m subscribers or 40m or 50m or x amount of millions of subscribers

More so than Sony fans , I will be interested in the Valve / Steam fans. There are so many people who refuse to buy on the windows store. I hear people all the time saying oh thank god halo or gears is coming to steam. But there is going to be a point in time there are so many games coming each year to game pass that even those die hard steam fans have to start considering it.

 

I don't know if I was ever dead set against buying games on Windows Store, since I had picked up a few titles here and there. Not really big releases, but there was a Hydro Thunder clone, and Spartan Assault, Hitman Go. Stuff like that. And I have mostly been a PC gamer for the last 15 years of so. But I think I played more Xbox in 2020/21 than I have in the 13 years prior. And it's mostly because of gamepass having tons of games... And my kids taking over my PC to play Minecraft. I played Dark Alliance yesterday, and it's not the best game, but it's totally worth the $15 a month I didn't pay for GPU because I redeem MS rewards to get it for free.

 

Yeah, should be fun being on Gamepass from 2023. Bethesda are boosting the stated quarterly big hitters for 2022 with Redfall and Starfield. Not sure what fills the other two quarters though.

For Sony's part, they've been ramping up internal studios and partnerships. They'll look just fine during the 2022 trailer season. $70 box vs Gamepass vs PSNow vs console vs streaming is other thread material though.

 

To help keep discussions on point, here's a breakdown of threads and topics:

• https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/what-should-sonys-acquisition-plans-be-spawn.62704/ - For discussing Sony's Acquisitions Plans or what you think they should be

• https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...e-possibly-completes-2022-07-to-2023-06.62702 - For discussing Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision Blizzard

• https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/microsoft-rumored-to-be-buying-2020-04-2020-07-2020-11.61697 - For discussing rumors of new Microsoft Acquisitions

To assist in directing the discussions, the Microsoft Acquisition Rumors thread is temporarily closed and the Microsoft Acquisition of Zenimax is closed since it's an old topic with nothing new coming about.