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Microsoft Acquires Zenimax Media in $7.5 Billion Deal


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$7.5B in cash, nbd. Having Games like Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI Day One on Game Pass is huge. Legit surprised a deal of this magnitude hadn't leaked out at all.

 

On 9/21/2020 at 10:40 AM, Link, the Hero of Dreams said:

What about Rareware? That was a pretty big deal and a huge blow to Nintendo two decades ago.

 

These acquisitions are nowhere near similar. With Rare, unless I'm misremembering, the Stampers were looking to get out of the game industry, and Rare weren't exactly lighting it up during their late years being a Nintendo developer. Nintendo has no qualms giving them up/allowing them to look elsewhere. While Rare was greatly beneficial for Nintendo, they were just a game studio, one that was expendable. Zenimax is an entire publishing arm, and the numerous IPs under the Bethesda/Zenimax umbrella were/are MUCH more relevant than anything Rare put(s) out.

 

Like, this is legit an industry changing acquisition.

Edited by Isotope
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Wow, I especially would not have expected this since Microsoft has been relaxing its exclusivity with stuff like the Ori games. I know those are a lot smaller than AAA properties but it kind of felt like the first step toward the death of exclusivity, outside of maybe a handful of core IPs. This is wild though.

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Now I'm curious on what the future of id Tech is going to be like. It has been an internal use only engine for the last few versions, with I think Star Wars: Jedi Academy being one of the last ones. So, will it:

  • Remain the same. Usable only with Bethesda/Zenimax
  • Be open to other game studios within Microsoft
  • Be open to the public, competing with Unity and Unreal.
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6 hours ago, Tyranogre said:

For comparison, it only cost Disney 4 billion dollars to buy out Star Wars.

It's kind of weird that in the context of BILLIONS of dollars that this comparison really brings things to scale.  To spend 3.5B more to acquire this than Disney did a mega giant brand like Star Wars is madness.

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I wonder if this means more console exclusivity or not. I feel like in today’s market buying Bethesda really translates to mostly getting a chunk of their sales (and the potential to apply pressure on them to produce more consumable games, but I’m not certain they would). I don’t think they would turn around on their recent cross-platform initiative because of this, I mean by keeping options open they stand to make more money than forcing console exclusivity, right? 

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8 hours ago, DranSeasona said:

I wonder if this means more console exclusivity or not. I feel like in today’s market buying Bethesda really translates to mostly getting a chunk of their sales (and the potential to apply pressure on them to produce more consumable games, but I’m not certain they would). I don’t think they would turn around on their recent cross-platform initiative because of this, I mean by keeping options open they stand to make more money than forcing console exclusivity, right? 

 

Microsoft owns Minecraft and things, and they've allowed them to be on other platforms. I see this being pretty much like that. At worst, some Bethesda games may eventually not come to a competitor's platform like Sony, but for the most part, Microsoft doesn't seem to care much about console exclusivity, and why would they when they have Windows, etc?

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