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

[Inuhanyou]

Stay salty my friend.

What did expect Microsoft to do? Just bale completely from the games business? Do you not want competition in the industry? Keep it stagnate & you won't have any great games to play.

Tommy McClain

Buying an entire subset of the game industry to 'respond' to a few timed exclusives isnt "competition".

Because in this scenario the one with the largest power and influemce 'wins' by default. there is no fair fight of equal moves to be made

But please continue to live in a silly platform war mindset and call others salty. What an insane attitude to have.

Its quite the microchasm for the rest of our our oligarchic society. There is no free market or competition in general when huge powers can just swallow up the smaller ones by default.

 

[AzBat]

It's a few timed exclusives now?

Oligarchy is better than the monarchy we would get if Microsoft didn't try to compete.

Tommy McClain

 

[Deleted member 7537]

The best thing is that we can get rid of the f. bethesda store. thanks ms

 

[PSman1700]

Otherwise, MS can create negativity amongst those who believe MS is simply buying their favorite franchises and hiding them behind MS’s hardware.

So, what is Sony doing then, keeping some exclusives behind their hardware? Yes more and more come to pc, but still theres exlusives to PS4/PS5 (cross gen for 4 years).

 

[eastmen]

Buying an entire subset of the game industry to 'respond' to a few timed exclusives isnt "competition".

Because in this scenario the one with the largest power and influemce 'wins' by default. there is no fair fight of equal moves to be made

But please continue to live in a silly platform war mindset and call others salty. What an insane attitude to have.

Its quite the microchasm for the rest of our our oligarchic society. There is no free market or competition in general when huge powers can just swallow up the smaller ones by default.

This is how it was with sony entering the market. I loved Tomb raider on my Saturn and would have loved part 2 on it. To bad Sony paid for exclusivity. But hey we all know it was bound to happen once such a large Company like Sony came in and started to throw its money around.


This is how it was before Nintendo entered the market then they had to go and use their lock out chips and limit how many games a company could release on their system at any time.

 

[AzBat]

I think a subset of PS owners that you see complain online may fall under that category. The remaining 150 million do not give a flying fakk.

Maybe, but we usually don't talk on behalf of those 150 million in here.

Tommy McClain

 

[Deleted member 7537]

This is how it was with sony entering the market. I loved Tomb raider on my Saturn and would have loved part 2 on it. To bad Sony paid for exclusivity. But hey we all know it was bound to happen once such a large Company like Sony came in and started to throw its money around.


This is how it was before Nintendo entered the market then they had to go and use their lock out chips and limit how many games a company could release on their system at any time.

Oh, come on. You bought a Saturn, you were the only one to blame. XD

 

[eastmen]

Oh, come on. You bought a Saturn, you were the only one to blame. XD

still one of the best consoles lol

 

[Shortbread]

I love competition. I'm glad to see Microsoft isn't pulling no punches this time around. Excellent hardware specs for both X/S and game-pass is looking better and better as time goes on. This will ultimately force Sony to compete harder... hopefully.

 

[PSman1700]

This will ultimately force Sony to compete harder... hopefully.

It seems they saw it coming abit too late regarding hardware and games.

 

[London Geezer]

It's a few timed exclusives now?

Oligarchy is better than the monarchy we would get if Microsoft didn't try to compete.

Tommy McClain

I’d have to agree. I’ve always advocated for healthy competition, and to me this is a great deal on MS’s side. No idea if it’s financially a good idea - $7.5B is quite a lot and I’m not sure how long it till take them to recoup and even make money out of this - but then again it doesn’t sound like MS is worried about that at all.

I’d be pretty sad if Doom but more importantly any game made with the idTech engine went completely exclusive. I’d miss that a lot. But that’s the only thing I’d miss so maybe that’s why I’m so kumbaya about it.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

I love competition. I'm glad to see Microsoft isn't pulling no punches this time around. Excellent hardware specs for both X/S and game-pass is looking better and better as time goes on. This will ultimately force Sony to compete harder... hopefully.

PSS PLUSSS COLLLLEEECTIIIOOOON

xD

edit: so, it's part of your PS+ suscription but needs a different stupid game. xD

 

[Scott_Arm]

This is what i was afraid of when ms started this shit. Monopolizing huge swathes the game industry with that huge bank account of theirs is the perfect way to destroy it. We live in quite the era

It's not like Microsoft was the first company to buy up game studios. They might be the only one I know of that's purchased an entire parent company, except for maybe some in the past where studios where bought up as an umbrella went bankrupt.

Overall I think it's bad for the industry, but it's not like Sony and Microsoft haven't purchased developers int he past. Sony bought Naught Dog, Guerilla Games, Media Molecule, Sucker Punch and Insomniac. It's a small number of studios purchased over a long period of time, but the intent is the same: take some of the best and brightest devs off the open market and keep their games to ourselves. There are benefits to the devs, because they have financial backing to take risks, but there is a downside for the consumer in platform exclusivity.

It sounds like Microsoft is going to have games from bethesda published on playstation, so maybe the consumer doesn't come out too bad here relative to other acquisitions.

 

[Inuhanyou]

If people are only thinking of this in terms of being able to play software on the platform they own, they are missing the point.

Whether it was previous rumors of bethesda buying wb games or sony buying leyou technologies, my opinion is the same that its terrible. Because itll always end like this.

In this situation, its irrelevant where ms decides the companies theyve bought out can move their games.

This is an industry problem that has no solution in the opposite direction. There is nothing sony or nintendo could do to respond to something like this, nor should they. Which leaves MS as the sole entity with any sway and zero competition in an industry that traditionally lives on that.

If you dont care about anything but blind consumerism that is valid. But dont veil that under a pretense to care about any sort of rationale of competition in this industry, because you dont actually care about it.

 

[iroboto]

$7.5B is quite a lot and I’m not sure how long it till take them to recoup and even make money out of this - but then again it doesn’t sound like MS is worried about that at all.

lol i'm sure purchasing Ninja and Shroud were much riskier Hail Mary moves.
7.5 is expensive, but if they need money they can just keep them selling as multiplatform for as long as they need to. I wouldn't be too quick to dash away Sony's market until you have a solidified plan in place to draw people to your platform.

 

[Nisaaru]

Did Titanfall get any platform exclusivity at all?

I thought Titanfall got killed by the success of Apex Legends.

IMHO Titanfall *2* got killed by EA's "stupid" sales window decision and bought the studio after their game "accidentally" flopped just by coincidence. A game which had arguably the best classic FPS campaign of the last generation before the last Doom(which I didn't play).

This myth Titanfall died because of 1's exclusivity is imho nonsense.

 

[iroboto]

If people are only thinking of this in terms of being able to play software on the platform they own, they are missing the point.

Whether it was previous rumors of bethesda buying wb games or sony buying leyou technologies, my opinion is the same that its terrible. Because itll always end like this.

In this situation, its irrelevant where ms decides the companies theyve bought out can move their games.

This is an industry problem that has no solution in the opposite direction. There is nothing sony or nintendo could do to respond to something like this, nor should they. Which leaves MS as the sole entity with any sway and zero competition.

If you dont care about anything but blind consumerism that is valid. But dont veil that under a pretense to care about any sort of rationale of competition in this industry, because you dont actually care about it.

There are pros and cons to it. On the upside, being owned by one of the richest companies in the world that is actively building out the platform you work on daily may lead to better results. We have seen MS green light a lot more titles that typically would not be greenlighted by publishers. That's actually pretty ipmortant in the world of gaming. We have far too many games that are becoming rather increasingly samely. We see most of the innovation now in the indie and AA space, and we see MS greenlighting Rare to do the bigger production versions of riskier titles.

Cons are of course what you speak of, but MS seems interested in gaining large scale traction than they are denying others of gaming. See Ori and cuphead on Switch.

The silver lining is as Tood puts it, Starfield is going to be their very first new original IP in 25 years of making games.

Just consider how risk adverse Bethseda has been for so long - how many titles that could have been made that were largely 'ignored' because they couldn't pull in the profit. Being owned by a platform holder draws a different set of requirements that 2 publishers typically merging don't offer (see Activision/Blizzard) and that is, the platform holders make a lot of money from licensing already, so they're interested in creating a diverse set of games that gets people to buy into their ecosystem.

And we need more of that.

Activision Blizzard is likely the worst case scenario you describe, in all the years they've been together I've still yet to see a new IP. We certainly need less of this.

 

[Nisaaru]

So any timeline until Bungie comes home (so we get working servers)?

 

[Billy Idol]

I hope MS give the studios absolute freedom and tons of money. Can‘t wait to see a fresh Bethesda with all these resources.

PS: hopefully MS don‘t Rare-ify the dev studios and force them to work on Kinect games!!

 

[eastmen]

If people are only thinking of this in terms of being able to play software on the platform they own, they are missing the point.

Whether it was previous rumors of bethesda buying wb games or sony buying leyou technologies, my opinion is the same that its terrible. Because itll always end like this.

In this situation, its irrelevant where ms decides the companies theyve bought out can move their games.

This is an industry problem that has no solution in the opposite direction. There is nothing sony or nintendo could do to respond to something like this, nor should they. Which leaves MS as the sole entity with any sway and zero competition in an industry that traditionally lives on that.

If you dont care about anything but blind consumerism that is valid. But dont veil that under a pretense to care about any sort of rationale of competition in this industry, because you dont actually care about it.

The great thing about the creative industries is there isn't a huge bar to get in. While gaming may have the highest bar to entry its still not horrid. As bigger companies are bought smaller ones can rise up in their place and create content similar to what the big boys were doing.

I mean look at ID they started off making shovel ware games until they broke out with commander keen and Wolfenstein . They even tried licensing a Mario port they made.

I think the industry will be fine as big companies are bought and sold all the time. In my gaming life time so many big companies are gone now or were bought up by larger companies. Hell Sega helped define the late 80s and early 90s and they were gobbled up early in the 2000s. Atari fell also quite quickly.