RIP Bethesda.
Are you joking? What could Microsoft ever do that's as bad as Fallout 76?
Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
531–540 of 798 posts
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#532Bethesda Games are not going not be exclusive to Xbox -- Confirmed by Todd Howard: >Like our original partnership, this one is about more than one system or one screen. We share a deep belief in the fundamental power of games, in their ability to connect, empower, and bring joy. And a belief we should bring that to everyone - regardless of who you are, where you live, or what you play on. Regardless of the screen siz…
While statements like these are common when mergers/buyouts happen, the final decision down the line will not be his to make. Not saying that things will not happen as he states, but it shouldn't be seen as a certainty.
It also begs the question what MS has to gain by buying Bethesda/ZeniMax besides exclusivity. Given the fact that they own the XBox/Windows gaming platform, would the revenue they get selling Doom on PlayStation really be enough to outweigh the potential of making it exclusive to drive more people to their platform?
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#533Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that Zenimax corporate, and likely some unknown exec in that machine, had a long standing grudge against John Carmack made me loose so much respect for them. I may not always agree with Carmack from what I've read on twitter (he works for Facebook now) but I have the utmost respect for him, his transparency in his key note lectures, and his supremely engineering focused priorities. His leadership at id Softw…
>had a long standing grudge against John Carmack made me loose so much respect for them. No kidding. You want to keep a guy like Carmack in the family in whatever capacity you can, because he carries such deep respect in the industry. It was a stupid thing for ZeniMax to burn that bridge.
Carmack's pull as an individual among tech folks, is unrivaled in gaming.
I can bet that many people would willingly taken pay cuts (or more-likely skipped on pay bumps) to work for a team led by Carmack.
Almost all of the other pop-culture figures in game development such as Todd Howard, Kojima and the like are designers, producers or story writers.
Carmack is the only one that is a proper coding guy.
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Maybe Carmack comes back to lead Windows mixed reality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and PCVR ? True wishful thinking right here.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo! CoD, Quake, Doom, Civ, Madden, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, All of Nintendo... you can’t fault them for milking an IP though when fans vote with their wallets. I would love new stories, new hero archetypes, new consequences, in games and I think indie have done a decent job at showing it can be done. But even indie suffers from the “Hey! This worked! Let’s just keep doing this!” IP milkage. Game dev, like so…
Look at when Blizzard tried starting new a new IP with Overwatch, I'm sure they did okay but Overwatch doesn't have the same legendary luster that Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo have (or had).
Overwatch is pretty successful.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#535Bethesda was already trending this way however this has deep implications. Ultimately I think it's going to slowly kill the core of the modding community as modding is forced into the platform and new users are displace the modding culture.
The modding will no longer be able to truly edit the engine itself through some reverse engineering and be forced to utilize the APl/scripting framework. Third-party tools will be locked out. Obviously this has happened already on the console platform. There's still the PC platform but that could be locked down further as well.
Think about the time and fostered talent that it took to make some of the communities amazing tools. For example script extenders for elder scrolls series. As mods are now centralized in official 'the store' the community grow around which will never allow mods like the script extender for developers to make advanced innovative mods. Even if other modding communities like the Nexus allow for that It's going to continue to fragment the community and the talent which is foster within the community. Then you throw paid mods into the picture... Thus begins the death of the open source pillar in modding.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they limit there revenue to a single platform? That doesn't make sense to me. But I don't play videogames, haven't since my kids were teenagers, think Call of Duty. I have sold software to corporate, and I can say the revenue from software sales far outweigh hardware revenues.
Targeting all platforms means the Zenimax division within Microsoft will make more money. Targeting only Xbox means more Xbox will be sold, so Xbox division will make more money. It's not clear which one is a better deal for MS.
They promised with last-gen Xbox One, and have followed it up, that all first-party games that launch for Xbox will also launch for PC. (Originally this extended to all games, but some late releases were xbox-only.) There are no xbox-only games for Xbox Series announced, from any publisher, that are not available for PC.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you say is Microsoft's worst game for microtransactions? I've played Forza Horizon 4 for a while and you can buy cars in that game, but you earn enough points that they all become pretty cheap after only a few hours in the game.
The biggest issue for me was that certain in-game cars were locked behind the spin-the-wheel game, and while(thankfully) there was no way to spend real life money for more spins, it still felt absolutely shit that I could have 100+ in-game hours, hundreds of millions of in-game currency, and yet no, I can't have that Mercedes E63 AMG, because it can only be won through spins. In Horizon 3 you could just buy any car a…
Thankfully Microsoft experimented with the real money payment for sort of the "spin-the-wheel" equivalent in the mainline Forza Motorsport series (off hand I can't remember if it was 5 or 6 that was the absolute nadir), and learned enough from that failed experience (and a similar one in I think it was Gears 4 and Halo 5) that it never infected the Horizon series.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#538This acquisition is good news for investors after publicly losing to Oracle on the TikTok deal.
For investors maybe, but probably not for consumers. It seems likely this will result in people having less choice about how and where they can play the games they enjoy.
I find it troubling that good news for the former group seems to trump bad news for the latter.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#539Best thing to ever happen to Bethesda Softworks and id. Zenimax is a mess of a parent company and has underinvested in id and hasn’t gotten beyond letting Todd Howard keep going further and further off target from what people want.
Re: Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
Skype is a very loud example of a poorly handled acquisition by Microsoft. The client has been turned into a real fan-spinner and it seems like they sacrificed a great standalone service for something that pushes consumer and business users towards tight integration with Microsoft's platform. 2020 could have been a banner year for Skype; instead Zoom is now shorthand for any video meeting whatsoever.
Yes, Skype was handled incredibly bad. I don't think MS knew what they bought and both the client and the platform turned from being the kleenex of voip to similar to seeing a yahoo email nowadays. I think MS'es ways have changed since then though, looking at acquisitions since 2013 to 2015-ish they seem to have been handled better IMO.
Also, an argument can be made that some of Microsoft's mess was being too hands off with Skype. A lot of Skype's own development woes were projects they started back while owned by eBay and simply finished in time for Microsoft to get the blame. Also the whole "Skype for Business isn't Skype and doesn't share anything but the brand name" was a hands off decision that was dumb in retrospect.