Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

bethesda.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 798 posts

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#431

Post by ionwake »

apatters wrote: post #94
francis_t_catte wrote: post #22

Soon 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…

Sure, if you ate McDonald's every day you'd probably think that there are no good restaurants anymore. My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one…

Is it possible to play dwarf fortress on mobile yet ?

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#432

Post by genpfault »

munificent wrote: post #357

Every time I see these posts, I think of Demolition Man: > Now all restaurants are Taco Bell. Taco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars. Out of all the dystopian sci-fi movies, who would have thought Demolition Man would have it right?

> Now all restaurants are Taco Bell

Or was it Pizza Hut?[1]

[1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/alternateversions

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#433

Post by paulpan »

Having just watched Netflix vs. the World documentary (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8407418/) last week, this acquisition seems to be inevitable as game streaming is taking off and will eventually become the defacto means of playing video games.

Microsoft's endgame is to increase the subscribers to its GamePass subscription so akin to Netflix's insatiable appetite for video content, Microsoft's will be for video games. But since IP development for games is expensive, time-consuming and hard to break into, it's arguably easier to acquire game studios entirely.

The impact is so wide-ranging: what becomes of Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now? Same goes for Sony and Nintendo. The most interesting one could be Apple, who clearly does not want game streaming to be the norm.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#434

Post by the_hoser »

SahAssar wrote: post #373
the_hoser wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. They've been pretty hands-off with their most recent acquisition, but one studio does not a trend make.

Looking outside of the gaming space their recent acquisitions seem to have gone fine, no? For example Github seems to go well, Linkedin was always pretty shit and unethical, so I'm not sure it's any better or worse. Citus seems to still be going well and still offers on-prem or enterprise versions on other clouds than Azure. Xamarin is more open-sourced since Microsoft took over. IMO, (and if you told me I'd say this…

Maybe, but that really depends on how independent Microsoft's gaming business is from the rest of the company.

I'm still waiting on the other shoe with github.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#435

Post by BadassFractal »

apatters wrote: post #94
francis_t_catte wrote: post #22

Soon 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…

Sure, if you ate McDonald's every day you'd probably think that there are no good restaurants anymore. My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one…

Excellent taste in colony survival titles!

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#436

Post by anbotero »

tinus_hn wrote: post #293
ekianjo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Rockstar ever gets acquired, this will be one of the most expensive deals ever. They routinely sell games in the dozens of millions of units.

The people that made GTA great left so that well is going to dry up pretty quick

How do you know? Do you have any source information? I had not read of this before

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#437

Post by objclxt »

partiallypro wrote: post #232
wpdev_63 wrote: post #7

Holy 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…

Microsoft doesn't care about exclusives that much, imo. Sure, a few here and there, but overall they just want people to use their software. That's why their new "exclusive" titles are also on Xbox One. Microsoft will make money by selling their Bethesda titles to PlayStation users, etc. They might make a few of their titles exclusive, but Fallout and Doom won't be among them.

What? They absolutely will make them exclusive.

Can you play Halo on the PlayStation? No, for the same reason you can’t play Uncharted on the Xbox.

Microsoft will happily support Windows gaming, for obvious reasons. But the PlayStation for a franchise like Fallout or Elder Scrolls?

I will believe it when I see it. It makes little strategic sense to offer those titles on Sony hardware when Microsoft have their own console.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#438

Post by mywittyname »

Osiris wrote: post #384
logicOnly wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the inevitable trend of gaming since the 90s. Small team makes innovative and interesting game. Gets bought, makes a good sequel, then milks IP forever. It's up to you to move on.

The trend is definitely moving away from many separate games and toward "living" games. Look at how many games these days end up just doing updates/DLCs over many years rather than releasing whole new versions of the game. Look at Destiny, there was originally planned for Destiny 3, but now the plan is just to make Destiny 2 the only game for the next 10 years with constant content updates. Even now, Destiny 2 of tod…

It makes a lot of sense for most games to work like this: once you have a core game, adding content to it is comparatively cheap. Which means that the ROI can be really high if a point release with new content causes a spike in unit sales.

This probably works better for indies than DLC because I do think people have developed an aversion to DLC due to the big publishers abusing it for cosmetic updates. Personally, I'm very likely to pick up something like Factorio at full price, knowing that the devs are going to be adding "free" content to the base game over the years. But I'll skip over games with "season passes" and just wait for the complete edition to be released.

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#439

Post by krzyk »

apatters wrote: post #94
francis_t_catte wrote: post #22

Soon 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…

Sure, if you ate McDonald's every day you'd probably think that there are no good restaurants anymore. My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one…

Give Factorio a try

Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

#440

Post by [deleted] »

harimau777 wrote: post #385
apatters wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you ate McDonald's every day you'd probably think that there are no good restaurants anymore. My top 4 games by playtime in the last few years were Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Dwarf Fortress and WoW Classic. Honorable mentions go to Spelunky and Stellaris. It's to everyone's great regret that a single one of these titles was purchased by one of the shitty publishers you mentioned, fortunately it's the one…

Indy is great if you like one of the genres where they excel (e.g. rogue like, deck builder, walking simulator, retro, traditional RPG, etc.). However, if you are into genres like modern FPS or open world action adventure then good indy games are difficult to come by.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN