Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
61–70 of 798 posts
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#62Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Nintendo is self-sustainable, Apple is exerting a lot of influence among smaller studios with Arcade. Like Annapurna Interactive (which is nota bene funded by Oracle).
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#63Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Nintendo is self-sustainable, Apple is exerting a lot of influence among smaller studios with Arcade. Like Annapurna Interactive (which is nota bene funded by Oracle).
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#64Microsoft now "owns" Quake? That is ironic.
> Speaking to bit-tech for a forthcoming Custom PC feature about the future of OpenGL in PC gaming, Carmack said 'I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today.' He also added that 'Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better.'
A few paragraphs below
> 'It is really just inertia that keeps us on OpenGL at this point,' Carmack told us. He also explained that the developer has no plans to move over to Direct3D, despite its advantages.
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/carmack-directx-bett...
And for a more up to date remarks
> "Lets fix OpenGL" http://cs.cornell.edu/~asampson/media/papers/opengl-snapl201... some interesting thoughts, but the shading language is the least broken part of OpenGL.
> For everyone saying "Vulkan!", the conclusion is that there is an opportunity for an API between Vulkan and the game engines. I agree.
https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/851397231320150017?...
So I can definitely feel the irony.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#65Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Tangentially, open-source game engine Godot keeps getting better and better, and it's just a matter of time before a significant game is made using its tools: https://godotengine.org/
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#66Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#67Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
Nintendo is self-sustainable, Apple is exerting a lot of influence among smaller studios with Arcade. Like Annapurna Interactive (which is nota bene funded by Oracle).
They had only $4.3 billion cash on hand as of 2018 (surely more by now thanks to the success and maturation of the Switch.) But Microsoft just dropped a little less than double that on ZeniMax.
I wish Nintendo were in such a rock-solid place where I'd feel confident about them existing forever like Disney but I don't think that's ever been the case.
Edit- The people downvoting me have apparently already forgotten about the Wii U. Imagine if they had two such systems in a row, without the DS/3DS line as a profitable fallback. Such are the possibilities of the future.
When Nintendo's doing well, they're doing great, and everyone seems to forget the bad times. The GameCube era wasn't much better, but at least the GameCube and GBA were profitable/break even from their launches, as opposed to the Wii U and especially 3DS post-Ambassador price cut.
Would be interested in a discussion or any kind of rebuttal from others who are actually familiar with Nintendo's financial history.
To be clear: Nintendo as a company operated a loss from 2012-2015. An incompetent CEO could easily exacerbate that into a death spiral. Don't take Nintendo for granted, is all I'm saying.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#68Soon we'll just have Microsoft, Epic, and a conglomeration of EA, Activision, and Ubisoft after Bobby Kotick forces them all to merge. Facebook will bungle up any chance they have of capturing the gaming market after writing a cryptic paragraph about their legal right to request blood samples from all Oculous users in the TOS. Valve will quietly exit software development altogether, and pivot to building custom vanit…
IMO Bethesda decided to sell to MS because their recent games cannot generate enough popularity. They can only hoped for skyrim and are struggling with their old engine.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#69Holy sh!t. Bethesda is huge! Well I was just thinking the other day that Microsoft really doesn't have any first party studio that are really as good as Sony's first party. IMO they didn't release a game 'this' gen that makes picking up a xbox one worth it. This could change that with fallout and doom. Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship.... I just hope that they don't trash the…
Isn't Minecraft a bigger game than anything Sony makes? It's owned by Microsoft but isn't an xbox exclusive.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you clarify what you mean? I recently got into developing on the Quake 2 engine, which I think is an amazing piece of software, so I'm kinda obsessed with all things Quake right now.
Quake is made by id Software. ZeniMax Media owns id Software. Microsoft just aquired ZeniMax Media.