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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

#631

Post by sali0 »

Medox wrote: post #193
bstar77 wrote: post #159

This just further confirms that my energy and money is going to the indie space. The level of enjoyment I get out of Factorio, Cuphead, Cogmind, Crusader Kings III, Curious Expedition 2, EXA Punks, Elite Dangerous, Kenshi, etc is so much greater than any AAA title I've touched in the past 5 years, yet these games are cheaper and most can run on a potato. I want to play games, not interactive movies.

Speaking of punk and non-AAA, I'll throw in Frostpunk. Now, speaking of winter survivals (and non-AAA), The Long Dark is also a masterpiece.

I recently got Frostpunk and love it. Beautiful, stressful game

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

#632

Post by WorldMaker »

basch wrote: post #626
WorldMaker wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a developer company and their oldest division is developer tools. They've made several attempts into the game engine / game engine adjacent space over the years, though rarely saw wins outside of low level DirectX. (XNA will be most remembered as an indie dev play, but a key piece of XNA was its content pipeline and Microsoft tried but didn't succeed that well at trying to replace the mostly mish-mash of…

I honestly don't see it being the kind of competition that ruffles those feathers. Microsoft wants developers developers developers to fill Game Pass and run their Infrastructure on Azure, and Microsoft Hearts Open Source. Microsoft open sourcing id Tech 6, and then saying Azure/XboxStore is the best places to build your game and host it, regardless of which engine you want, is the cold war, mutually assured rising t…

Though Epic being a very loud squeaky wheel right now (versus Apple) is exactly why Microsoft may show concerns of rocking the game engine boat right now. Xbox Game Studios is using the Unreal engine in a lot of projects (Rare's projects like Sea of Thieves; though divorced from Epic for several years now, The Coalition still sometimes seems to get "second party tech demo" support from Epic on Gears) and probably couldn't quickly switch everything to id Tech if Microsoft got into a showdown with Epic like Epic has been fighting Apple lately. Which partly means it is already too late for Epic getting "too much" power to strong arm in the engine space (and thanks to Fortnite increasingly having the confidence to use it).

I want to think that Microsoft can do it, regardless of Epic (and even Unity), but I still think it is a minefield.

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

#633

Post by int_19h »

munk-a wrote: post #570
int_19h wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mount & Blade series is an interesting counterexample to that, although I'm at a loss as to how define the genre ("feudalism sandbox"?). The first games were very clearly indy, but they capitalized on that success, and Bannerlord is a much more ambitious and polished game.

M&B is actually published by an arguably large company? I don't know where folks put Paradox in the ranking but they're certainly raking in the money with both internal dev & publisher only projects. And they're making a new World of Darkness RPG for the first time in forever.

It was originally self-published indy, Paradox picked it up sometime during their betas. In 2015, TaleWorlds decided to return back to their indy roots, and got the publishing rights (for all already-released games, as well as M&B2: Bannerlord) back.

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

#634

Post by WorldMaker »

whynaut wrote: post #577
WorldMaker wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 today is a significantly different than Destiny 2 at release. Destiny seems to have gone through a lot of different plans. The plan before Activision was seemingly to stop after 1 and make that the live service game, though…

Not that they were trying to milk it, but that they are currently twisting 2 into something it wasn’t. The game was not originally written to support also being Destiny 3.

I'd argue that was always the Destiny plan to be a constantly shifting MMO and Destiny 1 is the real outlier at this point. The teething pains right now "twisting 2 into something it wasn't" seem to be more somewhere between "twisting 2 into what it was always meant to be" and "Bungie is still learning how to run and build an MMO the hard way by ignoring most of what worked for decades" (for instance, relying so much on streaming from the disc/hard drive over streaming from the server making it real hard for them to keep all zones active at the same time because they run against disc/hard drive size limits; that's Ancient MMO Trade-Offs 101 that Bungie seems dead set on doing the weirdest possible solutions, though to Bungie's credit they aren't the only ones in this current "live service" games era learning this old lesson the hard way as games like Fallout 76 and Sea of Thieves seem just as likely to hit the exact same wall if they try to expand much more).

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

#635

Post by rodgerd »

epicide wrote: post #136
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…

You make a good point to bring up indie development (WoW excluded), but I think looking at the storefronts is also important. For these big conglomerates, the trendy thing is to have your own games store. Complete with exclusivity deals, privacy concerns, and plenty more. That's not to say that every game on a store has these issues. However, I think the lesson from mobile app stores is: don't discount the impact tha…

> Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers.

HN: TEAR DOWN THE APPLE STORE MONOPOLY! Also HN: Steam is cool and pulls 30% from developers.

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

#636

Post by jugg1es »

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…

You should try Factorio!

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

#638

Post by mcphage »

tubularhells wrote: post #622
mcphage wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Nothing yearly for Steam, it's a one-off fee, I think about 100 USD these days (it changed over the years). For the macOS store it is a 100 USD a year or so, and of course they take their cut from your sales. I prefer Valve's way of doing business.

Oh, okay. You started talking about whether it’s worth releasing a Mac game on steam, and then brought up a yearly fee, so I was having trouble following where you transitioned.

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

#639

Post by bhewes »

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…

Ha, in Demolition Man every restaurant became a Pizza Hut after the corporate wars.

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

#640

Post by larssorenson »

rodgerd wrote: post #635
epicide wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point to bring up indie development (WoW excluded), but I think looking at the storefronts is also important. For these big conglomerates, the trendy thing is to have your own games store. Complete with exclusivity deals, privacy concerns, and plenty more. That's not to say that every game on a store has these issues. However, I think the lesson from mobile app stores is: don't discount the impact tha…

> Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers. HN: TEAR DOWN THE APPLE STORE MONOPOLY! Also HN: Steam is cool and pulls 30% from developers.

It's worth drawing the distinction that Steam, as opposed to Apple and their app store, does not hold an exclusive monopoly and cannot dictate where users can install software from. If a Dev doesn't like Steam, there are other publishers and store fronts that they can peddle their wares through. Similarly users can go elsewhere to buy and install, even direct from the manufacturer.

Steam being the de facto choice is another issue entirely, and yet another discussion for their fee structure.

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