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

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

#591

Post by Galaxity »

13415 wrote: post #445
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…

Well, not everybody has the same tastes. I mostly don't like the aesthetics of indie games, especially not the "indie feel" or any kind of pixelated or animation-style graphics. I will not play anything that reeks of "design". Instead, I prefer realistic-looking graphics, with moving trees and clouds. I've more often than not spent too much money on new AAA just to look at the graphics and barely play. Unfortunately,…

Realistic graphics are no more AAA than well done "indie feel" graphics. Realistic-looking games can just as much "reek of design" as you put it. Many of those indie games have AAA-graphics with good story and original gameplay.

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

#592

Post by mcphage »

tubularhells wrote: post #396
ineedasername wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple probably doesn't have much revenue from the OS X desktop store, but if we're talking about total gaming revenue, Steam is around $5 billion/year and Apple is around $20 billion/year. Although I'm pretty sure Apple's # represents gross sales, not their 30% cut. I don't know if Steam's # is the revenue they receive after their cut, or if it's gross sales. If their # is the cut they take, they'd be far ahead of th…

From a gamedev friend, there is no money on macOS. iOS and apple arcade is a viable option, but on Steam, the macOS sales are not worth the headache support and development gives you. Lots of quirks to work around with macOS, and more to come with the ARM transition as apple will surely blame developers for performance problems with x86 titles. Not to mention that the yearly developer fees that you have to pay to kee…

> but on Steam, the macOS sales are not worth the headache support and development gives you. [...] Not to mention that the yearly developer fees that you have to pay to keep a game's long tail on the store.

What yearly developer fees do you need to pay to keep a macOS game on Steam? Is it to Valve?

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

#593

Post by deadbunny »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #173
akhilcacharya wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the joke is funny but realistically it's clear that Valve is getting back in the game, so to speak, and we're probably going to see some VR followup to Alyx in the next year or two.

Sort of; unless they make more games, Alyx is "just" a tech demo or an attempt to sell more of their VR kits. It's weird, they've got some seriously good franchises that they haven't done anything with; Half-Life could use a sequel every few years; Portal could become a massive franchise; Team Fortress 2, CS:GO and DOTA 2 are huge money makers but I think they're reluctant to make sequels to those because of balancin…

Do we need sequels every few years? Don't get me wrong I'll be the first I the queue for HL3 or Portal 3 but only because historically it has been a fantastic set of games.

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

#595

Post by dplavery92 »

komali2 wrote: post #523
johnnyanmac wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we reign back in the markets? It doesn't seem like consumer choice is working out very well. consumer choice is working as intended. They are fine playing "free" games supported by the 1%, and many nowadays won't pay >5-10 dollars for a game unless it's from a very established IP. Even without the mobile market, The story isn't much different. You either throw yourself out there in a sea of indie games, or you…

If we're willing to regulate gambling (which we are, because we do regulate it), then I don't think we can simply wave our hands at mobile games and say "bah, consumer choice. They play the games, don't they?"

For what it's worth, the "Free to Play" sector that dominates a lot of market share isn't just the gambling-lite, pay-to-win mobile sector anymore. We're talking about major titles like Fortnite, League of Legends, DOTA2, Rocket League, Hearthstone, and Valorant, which have millions of concurrent players, dominate streaming services, and often have high-production e-sports events. Even the latest title in the Call of Duty franchise offers a Free to Play Battleground mode.

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

#596

Post by badsectoracula »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #391
mattmanser wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fallout 4 was a massive hit and they've got a new franchise about to come out (Starfield). Wolfenstein + Dishonored have consistently sold well. In May 2016, 5 years after Skyrim was released, it was valued at $2.5 billion, now it's being bought 4 years later for $7.5 billion. I appreciate some Bethesda fans have a weird agenda, but you are wrong. Also, Starfield has been written in an overhauled engine, so again, wr…

> ... stop the small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine with every new Bethesda game. Seeing as there are still some ancient problems with CreationKit (physics over 60fps, widescreen support, etc), I'll be interested to see how much they will overhaul it and how many old bugs will have to be fixed by the community (see nexusmods "Universal Patch" for a…

FWIW the 60fps issue was introduced in Oblivion (it didn't exist in Morrowind) and that was because of the physics integration. However that is an integration issue and something they have actually fixed - in other games (e.g. Skyrim VR).

Similarly with widescreen support, there isn't really an issue with it, you can use any resolution by modifying configuration files but they just... do not bother to polish it up.

(note that any bug that can be fixed with normal mods isn't really an engine bug but a content bug - though some mods do work by hooking the engine executable)

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

#598

Post by CivBase »

FloatArtifact wrote: post #535

Bethesda 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…

I'm not sure where this came from. Are you saying that Microsoft is opposed to modding?

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

#599

Post by ketzo »

modeless wrote: post #403
tosh wrote: post #301

Carmack on the acquisition: > Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs, and they don’t have a grudge against me, so maybe I will be able to re engage with some of my old titles. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832...

Carmack left Zenimax because they wanted him to work on sequels instead of VR. They only started caring about VR once the $2B Oculus acquisition was dangled in their faces, and then scrambled to find a way to get a slice that they didn't earn. I didn't buy DOOM because I didn't support Zenimax's cynical lawsuit/cash grab. Maybe now I'll get DOOM after the Microsoft acquisition closes.

I hope you do — Zenimax aside, it’s a damn good game.

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

#600

Post by failuser »

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…

I wonder what Lucas Pope is up to. There have been no press since Return of the Obra Dinn.
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