Microsoft buys Bethesda, publisher of Skyrim, Doom, and Fallout, for $7.5 billion
Aux Features Games
Just a few months before the launch of the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, Microsoft has put together what could be the video game industry’s equivalent of Disney buying Lucasfilm for $4 billion—only this deal cost nearly double that. As reported by Bloomberg, Microsoft is going to acquire ZeniMax Media, the company that owns video game publisher Bethesda Softworks (which controls what is arguably the single most impressive stable of critically acclaimed video games this side of Nintendo), for $7.5 billion. That’ll buy a hell of a lot of sweet rolls, bottle caps, and demon skulls.
For those who don’t closely follow video game publishers, ZeniMax is the parent company that owns the various studios behind Doom, Prey, Wolfenstein, Dishonored, The Evil Within, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls (the series Skyrim is a part of), meaning Microsoft will now own easily a half-dozen hugely successful video game franchises, plus some smaller titles that still have a nice following and whatever future things that these studios come up with. Speaking of future things: The Bloomberg story notes that upcoming games will be available through Microsoft’s Game Pass service, meaning anyone who pays for that service (which is increasingly becoming hard to avoid, if only because it’s a damn good deal) will be able to play Wolfenstein 3 or Skyrim 2 or whatever for free on Xbox and PC.
As the Bloomberg story also points out, the timing of this is interesting because Bethesda has recently shown a much stronger interest in Sony’s PlayStation 5 than Microsoft’s new Xboxes, with “timed console exclusives” already in place for two games (Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo). Those will still be launching on PlayStation first, as Microsoft says it will honor those deals, but the availability of future games on non-Xbox consoles will be determined on a “case-by-case basis.” In other words, Wolfenstein 3 and Skyrim 2 might not be available on Playstation at all—though it’s worth noting that Microsoft owns Minecraft and continues to happily make buckets of cash by pushing that game out on every platform imaginable, so there is a precedent for Microsoft to not put too much stake in Xbox exclusivity. Then again, Microsoft recently had to delay Halo Infinite and doesn’t have much else on the horizon (have they announced a new Forza Horizon?), so it might be hungry for some games that you can only get on the Xbox family of systems.
The deal is expected to be finalized next summer, though, so it might be a while before we start to see a lot of concrete changes as a result of this, but it’s a certified big deal and will definitely have some big repercussions for the gaming world.
28 Comments
Eh Microsoft is more about getting as many people to access its products as possible. They’ll still make it available on PlayStation, but they will also be Day 1 Game Pass releases.
You can get MS Edge for Mac!
Skyrim 2
Yeah, it’s called a joke
starting to feel like the smartest buy this console cycle is: a PC. feels like every ‘exclusive’ will end up landing there anyway.
If you can afford the ever evolving rigs you’ll need to play future games, pc is great. For all of us who want to chill and just play games, consoles are great. It just sucks it has to be like this. I’m an Xbox fan so happy we’ll get Bethesda games but it’s not good for industry
I haven’t upgraded my PC in something like 4 years and it still runs every new game fine.
Law & Order: SVU (Special Videogame Unit) excerpt:
“It looks like we got another one.”“Yup.”“Died the same way.”“Yup.”“When are people going to learn not to cross Minecraft with Elder Scrolls?”
Finally, an SVU where Ice-T knows what’s going on
You mean, like, people that buy the scratchy lotteries?
Hopefully they’ll be able to make some real canvas bags now.
Bethesda really scored big when they made the issue about that instead of their crappy game. Impossible for a normal human to do anything but laugh at whiny nerds who paid over one hundred dollars U.S. for a gym bag.
I hope that ‘Microsoft will be allowed to launch Todd Howard into the sun’ wound up being one of the agreed upon terms.
God, I hope they just gut it for properties/studios and burn the rest, then salt the earth where it stood. One of the worst companies ever to own a stable of incredible game studios.
Something Something..arrow to the knee.(crickets)What, no place for 2011 humor anymore?
Oh hey, you’re finally awake.
Stop, criminal scum!What, nobody?
With my luck they’ll release subsequent installments of all their franchises on PlayStation except Fallout, the only one I actually play.
Sure they are buying it now. But it’s going to be unusable until at least 6 months of patching and it won’t work really well till the modders put out an unofficial patch. Also Skyrim 2? Really AVClub?
Pretty sure even my mum would know Skyrim 2 was a stupid thing to say, and she was cremated two years ago.
Grow a sense of humor.
We have all accepted the fact that there hasn’t been an editor at the AVC since like, oh, 2010 at best. Or, at least we -should- accept it. Not gonna change, ever.
I just want to play Wolfenstein 3 on my Playstation4. Please and thank you.
Fallout: Newer Vegas.
If there will be a Skyrim 2, does that mean that TES4: Oblivion = Skyrim -1?
It’s such a Microsoft thing to do.
Pretty ballsy move from MS, dropping $7.5bn on a suite of studios that, collectively, hasn’t released a game that cracked a 90 on Metacritic over at least the past four years. Guess that IP’s really valuable. With a ten-year window, that group’ll have to generate $750m a year, net, to break even. I wonder what they know that we don’t.Then again, Bethesda and Obsidian are now under the same roof, and MS loves when their sister devs work together and cross-promote. Be interesting to see what, if anything, comes out of that.