So Microsoft just bought Bethesda

@navster15: That's part of getting the license from Major League Baseball.

Out of curiosity, what do you have against Xbox? And all of this stuff will be available on PC, if you're so inclined.

@justin258: Additionally Microsoft said they will honor Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop exclusivity and will most likely release games multiplatform going forward. I think they realized that it's better to open up more avenues of revenue and sell your games where you can instead of holding them down to just a console. Sony has been pretty bad about this over the years. This Demons Souls remaster is a great example - such an old game yet they are still clinging to exclusivity not even letting it come to PC. Sure maybe someday but as far as we know, not anytime soon. They have so many old games they could bring to PC as well but they just refuse to do it.

I mean he's been doing great so far and Steve Jobs was at Apple for a while and had a pretty good run. No one is actually anywhere forever.

I really hope so. It's something I have grown to be optimistic about that platform with how volatile the games market has been. Stuff like that and Wasteland 3 is great to see them push.

I'm hoping it can put a little safety net and polish and push to some weirder or more niche stuff that can possibly catch on big for them.

I'm surprisingly ok never playing an Elder Scrolls game again until I finally replace my 2005 P4 Dell.

Yes. It's coming right after Baldur's Gate 3.

Oops, can't do that joke anymore.

@nameredacted: But that won't change anything too meaningfully for the next five to ten year "generation". If Phil and his team leave tomorrow we still have a pretty strong foundation for the xser that almost can't change meaningfully until the next major pivot that tends to be around the time of a new console. Even gamepass was largely pushed alongside the refresh skus when you realize the backwards compatibility was a way to make "I get a bunch of five year old games" a selling point.

Beyond that: Obsidian and inxile were pretty decent acquisitions before Bethesda overshadowed everything and they were specifically founded because interplay/black isle went tits up. So if MS somehow screw the pooch massively in the next few years you can expect Bethesda/Zenimax to get bought elsewhere because of their powerful IPs and pretty much every other studio splintering or reforming elsewhere. That is just the industry and has been for decades.

I mean with how meh to weak Microsoft's first party IP has been in recent years, they probably needed this. The one studio I really care about in this news is Arkane. I loved the Dishonored games and Prey had interesting ideas (I never finished it), so I hope Deathloop at least stays on PS5 for the time being. With Bethesda proper I don't think I've enjoyed a game from them since at least Skyrim. Even then, I have more nostalgia for Oblivion and Fallout 3. I would be interested in seeing what Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 actually look like but who knows at this point with the pandemic and the fact that Bethesda for me has not engendered a lot of confidence with their recent actions/game output. So at first blush, it was big news but then the more I thought about it, I only really care about Arkane.

Apple is literally the world's most valuable company. They are an economic power house so large that people don't really have a good grasp how big they are.

@plan6: They are extremely successful under Tim Cook’s leadership in terms of business and market share but they’re no longer at the forefront of innovation like they were under Jobs.

I think MS is treating their consoles as cheap PCs, their goal is to get into subscription business (GamePass) which they are doing successfully. Netflix doesnt care where you play their content, they make money hand over fist. So think of Xbox as a player that is made by MS, but there are a ton of other players made by other people (PCs). If you cant afford a PC you get an Xbox and use that to get experience equivalent to mid range PC. When you think about it this way, then it totally makes sense to take a loss on console sales. It aint about the consoles, consoles is a means to get people to subscribe to your service, which is where the money comes in.

Now when you think about it this way, then MS will win in console sales every time, because its ok to take a loss, even give them out for free (although noone will be doing that), because you can guarantee a constant revenue stream from subs. So they can always undercut.

@duxa: yeah

Any other year I think MS would be screwed. But between everyone having scripts to snatch pre-orders and people being wary of mass uncertainty, there is a lot of "should I just wait a few months?" going on. So Sony's pretty significant 2020 advantage isn't going to matter anywhere near as much if MS can get a game or two out in early 2021 (signs still point to no for that, right?). And the general lack of launch games on both sides are making a lot of people think about what is coming down the pipe and how much of their back catalogue they can play. Both of which seem to favor MS pretty heavily at this point

I also suspect that the ridonkulous nvidia cards are helping. Been years (about 7?) but I don't remember things being anywhere near this cut and dry for a PC upgrade around the PS4's launch. But right now? We have a card that can stomp both consoles, has the magic ray tracing bullet. and isn't too expensive by video card standards. Hell, get a not too expensive nvme ssd for your OS and you probably have about the same load times. So a lot of people (myself included) are thinking of prioritizing a new PC build and dealing with consoles in a year or three. All of which plays in to MS's overall model.

Everything can change and momentum matters a lot. But I think MS are very much in a position to lose the console launch VERY badly but win the generation by a large margin.

Sony gotta get Take-Two now. Followed by Microsoft getting WB and Ubisoft. This is the shaping up to be the Stalingrad of console wars.

Well, once you start getting into being a services business ala Netflix, then you dont need to be announcing your games way ahead of time and this is actually a good thing for MS. Historically early announcements, E3 showing etc etc were all needed to get retailers to buy your product. Remember, that from the perspective of a game developer/publisher, the human that ends up playing the game is not really their customer, those are their fans. Their customers are the stores that say "yes give me 1 million copies", and all that previous early announcements/showings were necessary for this.

Now that we are in the digital age, they can shadow drop a game the same day, and people will be excited as hell. Netflix launches shows without much warning, it makes you keep your subscription, because there is always excitement of a new day bringing something new. Now same thing with gamepass, if any day you can have a new Halo, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Gears, etc etc dropped on you, then its a service that stops being something you plan out for a year, but starts to becomes something that is necessary to constantly subscribe to. Much like Netflix. It stops being a service where you look a year ahead and think "hmm here are the releases, should I sign up for this?" to "I know for a fact there will be new exciting stuff all the time, unannounced, i might as well stay subscribed". Games take a long time to make, but games are also a lot more hours of entertainment, a single game can be equivalent to a season of as how. All MS needs is 12 to 24 studios, which they have, to shadow drop a game every month and you have everyone subscribing year round. On top of that you get your normal 3rd party releases also coming to the service.

I admire the optimism of this thread, but there is a huge graveyard of closed developers and franchises post-acquisition by large corporate publishers. I'm sure as heck gonna get and enjoy gamepass now though.

@duxa: Shadow drops are a great way to keep people in your ecosystem. Nintendo STILL have a very weak 2020 but by using hype management techniques people are losing their minds over spending 60 bucks for three gamecube games.

I see no way that 2020 ends (oh god it felt good to type that) with Sony not having a significant lead in terms of console sales. But MS stand to have the strongest 2021 and beyond in ways that might actually work really well.

Streaming services are awesome once people get invested. That is why gamepass had the "convert all your xbox time to gamepass ultimate for a dollar" for so long. And why disney plus got the mandalorian out ASAP and hbo go was basically "yo, wouldn't it be cool to watch game of thrones without pirating it?"

I had this same reaction too. It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft completely ruined Lionhead and drove Rare into the ground by forcing them to make avatar games... The cynic in me suspects that this is as much about depriving Sony of games as it is about making games for their own players. Microsoft could liquidise half these studios and still come out ahead just by dominating the opening years of this cycle. Lest we forget, this purchase is about making money, not videogames.

There's also some pretty weird double standards here between Microsoft securing dozens of exclusives, several of which were already scheduled for release on a competitors platform, and the backlash Epic got for doing the same thing on a much smaller scale?

They would be crazy to make them exclusives what is going happem is this. Pc and Xbox players get them as part of gamepass everyone else buys them just way to much money on the line they need to get ROI on 7.5 billion dollars and you don't do that by excluding popular franchises from large audiences.

It's pretty fucking nuts, though it's far too early for me to know whether I feel optimistic or pessimistic. From everything I've heard today from the various players, it seems like more of a vassal acquisition than an annexation acquisition, if that makes sense. I think the apparent continuing degree of independence plus Xbox's trend toward being a more services-focused division rather than hardware-focused means it's far more likely we'll keep seeing Bethesda's IPs on Sony hardware than with the smaller studios MS has gobbled up. But who knows! This is wild.

On a more personal level, I'm a little disappointed as a long-suffering BGS apologist. I had been hoping that Obsidian's Elder Scrolls-alike game with Microsoft money behind it was going to be a kick in the ass to get TES VI to step up its game and maybe, just maybe hop onto a new engine and do some proper innovation. But now, since both IPs are under the same roof and MS is for better or worse taking the Netflix approach of lackadaisical roll-of-the-dice quality control with their acquired studios and the type of stuff they're stocking Game Pass with, I'm less optimistic that'll come to pass.

Microsoft felt burned about last generation they said f* it lets just buy all developers.

Situation like this is very unique. MS is about services now, not about hardware. They need as many devs as they can get a hold of. ANd I imagine eventually goal is to outsource xbox to PC manufacturers.

Sony may have a console lead (although with a $300 xbox I dont see that happening), but you have to basically consider all PCs as part of Microsoft's number, seeing how they are transitioning to be a service (gamepass), they already have an insane billion+ install base of their "consoles".

Guys, you keep talking about exclusivity. Why would MS make anything exclusive? The only reason to do so is to sell your hardware. MS doesnt care about selling their hardware, in fact the fewer they sell the better, they lose $100 on each sale, sell a million you just lost $100 million.

Its a double edged sword. They need to get people to buy gamepass, you do this through selling xboxs, but at the end of the day you want to completely rid yourself of selling xboxs and instead provide a monthly service that people can subscribe to. Outsource the xbox to PC manufacturers and bam all you do is provide services, someone else makes the 'console' for you. Just like netflix doesnt care what player you play Netflix on.

So, being a service, MS making anything exclusive would be like Netflix saying that you can only play certain shows only on Apple TV... that doesnt make any sense. You want to make your service as appealing as possible.

I can even see them eventually going completely away from selling games outright but instead keeping everything inside gamepass. So you subscribe and get access, you unsubscribe you lose access. very Netflix like.

certainly is a power move- and i'm sure my perspective has already been expressed earlier in this this thread...but even as someone who wasn't planning on buying an xbox but still enjoys checking in on elder scrolls every now and then- i'm not too worried.

i feel like a massive corporation doesn't buy massive multiplatform franchises (elder scrolls, fall out, doom etc.) without the intention of continuing to sell them everywhere. why get the rights to skyrim- a title with one of the longest tails in video game sales- only to curtail its successor's sales potential and/or audience?

this doesn't feel so much like a strike against sony as it ensures microsoft can get its taste no matter where their games are played. and from a business standpoint- that feels waaay more forward-thinking.

I think that's down to us not knowing exactly what Microsoft will do in this regard.

Microsoft will honor the exclusivity commitments for Deathloop and GhostWire: Tokyo, but other games will hit non-Xbox platforms on a “case-by-case basis,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer

On one hand , you could see how taking away games like The Elder Scrolls and Doom away from Playstation, would result in more players choosing for Xbox or PC as their gameplatform. On the other hand, releasing games as multiplatform is how Bethesda gets the most sales for their games and that is great for Microsoft as well. Plus they build goodwill with the gaming audience that way while still making bank, which can be a net positive down the line.

oh shit. I just realized. No more Todd Howard on E3 stage doing Bethesda press conference. But does MS conference get twice as long now? :P

Is QuakeConn now a Microsoft Event? Does MS stop going to E3 like Sony and instead uses QuakeCon as their conference/announcements?

How does John feel about his babies being under Microsoft now?

@duxa: Carmack? He's totally fine with it

https://mobile.twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1308069857913720832

The underlying assumption here is that E3 will still be a thing, and I'm not convinced that it actually will. MS could easily just do a "Direct-like" video a few times per year to get out info about their games.

@onemanarmyy: I think Microsoft understands that Sony fans aren’t necessarily going to move away from their chosen platform, at least the ones that play exclusives. Sure, they can manage to take away the sports and COD players, but even then those players have their online friendships tied to PSN, and might not want to switch.

So that leaves the 50-ish million X1 install base, plus 10-30 platform agnostics who could be turned if they play their cards right. That still leaves 70-90 million players in Sony’s camp, assuming no growth in the overall console market. In that case, why not sell your games on PS4/PS5? We can safely assume that Game Pass will not be allowed on PSN, so the only way to get Microsoft games is to pay for them. The Xbox remains the better deal with Game Pass, so there’s still reason for Xbox fans and platform agnostics to be drawn to Microsoft’s pitch. Oh, and as a Game Pass subscriber it makes your experience better, by expanding the install base in multiplayer games and just all around increasing the cultural cachet of Xbox games.

I think if there’s any takeaway from the Bethesda acquisition is that it’s likely Microsoft, at some point in the next few years, will announce all of their games, the Halos, Forzas, and yes, The Elder Scrollses, will release on PS5 going forward. It just makes too much sense for them not to.

Pete Hines: "...now I know you've all been looking forward to that moment, so without further ado, I'll introduce my friend and yours, Todd Howard"

(Pete turns round, opens oven door, using oven gloves, lowers Todd Howard onto the counter before leaving)

@himsteveo: It means a more expensive game pass?? The first hit is always free!!

Looks like the era of the large, independent gaming studio is drawing to an end. By "large, independent" I mean companies with a lot employees but which are not owned in some way by MS, Sony or Nintendo. I can only think of Ubisoft and EA at the moment.

@redwing42: That is true and considering how may Atlus games end up being Playstation exclusives anyway there really is no reason for Sony to buy Sega.

@sweep: Like I said before: Two of the studios they acquired last year (?) are famous examples of devs who fled a disaster of hindenburg proportions. If it all goes to shit Bethesda's studios (oh yeah, Machinegames fled the Starbreeze clsuterfuck and I forget how Bethesda/Zenimax got iD but that can't have been due to good management) will likely get bought Netherrealms style and the rest will either get folded into other studios or make their own indies using that generations equivalent of kickstarter to find a few games... just the way they already did.

Like, there is a lot of room for this to go bad. But we are also no longer in the 90s/00s situation where you require a major publisher to do anything. Crowd funding of some form will exist for the devs with Triple H sized pedigrees and small indie studios are still very much a thing.

----

Although a friend pointed out a bigger concern. Bethesda have sort of made "fuck nazis" a catchphrase in their E3 presentations on account of Nazis being fucking assholes and Wolfenstein being satisfying as hell. Curious if MS ever let Todd or the Machinegames folk say that on stage again since that is very much not a marketable statement these days because of course it isn't

@nasar7: You don’t need to innovate when you are the most valuable company in the world. You are the top of the food chain.

@gundato: I think that 'fuck nazi's' is a thing you can say while promoting a Wolfenstein game. It's still mainstream to condemn what the nazi party did in world war 2 after all. However, Microsoft probably wouldn't let them draw a connection to the alt-right crowd of today and declare them Nazi's as well.

Feel like the subject of this thread suggests such a war is still very much alive.

I came back to the GB forums just to see what the best and worst were thinking.

Sounds like a move that should have been countered by anti-trust law. Maybe, Bethesda will actually put out a good game now?

@navster15: I suspect that the install bases of consoles will become quite irrelevant within the next 5 years. XCloud being available on phones is just the first step in the strategy to expand Game Pass beyond the Xbox ecosystem.

Soon most TV's will likely have a built in Game Pass/xCloud app which will let you play all the Xbox games as long as you own a controller. I know that fast internet is still not a reality in some parts of the USA and Australia for example, but internet connectivity will only get better and fewer and fewer people will be buying games outright.

@zoofame: Exactly that. As much as their Halos, Gears and Forzas land, Crackdown, Sea of Thieves (initially), Project Spark, Titanfall, Ryse and State of Decays haven't. In some of those cases, those will has lost more due to being thrown on Gamepass at launch. This gives Microsoft more options and, unlike Sony, they have the money as a corporation to make a big acquisition like this.

The rumours I heard a couple years ago about them buying EA aren't as far-fetched now.

@isomeri Possibly. Although it might still be relevant to Sony if they're the last man standing in the "we make a box" business. They still sell long after the 'this might be the last console generation' sentiments that were circling prior to 2013. It makes me wonder how much producing your own hardware costs vs the infrastructure costs for something like xCloud.

@isomeri: I used to buy games on release day full price. The idea of waiting around 3-6 months for a sale seemed ridiculous. Ever since I got GamePass late last year I bought 2-3 games, and they were all PS4 exclusives. Everything else I played through GamePass. Tried Surge 1 on a whim and thought it was really fun, then I waited a bit and the sequel became available so I put a ton of hours into that. I would have never bought Gears 5 on my own, but since it's available day 1 on GamePass I played through all of that and then a chunk of the multiplayer out of boredom.

As a "core" gamer that used to buy all the big AAA games day one and all that stuff, GamePass really changed the way I engage with games.

@acharlie1377: don’t you get my hopes up Mr. Charlie! Don’t you do it!!!

The more I think about this, the weirder it all seems.

The timing of this announcement HAS to be aimed at Sony, who just had a few surprise announcements themselves - and it seems also aimed at the Series X/S preorders, that are supposedly starting.

I don't think throwing money out to get exclusive games is a good thing for gamers. Sony are doing it with FFXVI and a bunch of other games, so they are also to blame.

I can't help but think that this money would have been better spent on actual new games and not this. The worst part is that some of the horrible people who seem to run Bethesda get paid now - and some of them might even stay on board?

So.. we can look forward to more Commander Keen Mobile and Elder Scrolls Blades? I sure hope not.

That's a big get for Microsoft certainly. Though as some others in this thread, it doesn't move the needle for me as I haven't really been entirely into or interested in a lot of their recent outputs.

@isomeri: While I agree with you in principle, I think 5 years is way too short a horizon. Internet is bad in many parts of the world, sure, but also there are countries where internet gaming isn’t culturally that big, like in Japan. Add to that the fact that game streaming still doesn’t feel great compared to local gaming (see Jeff B’s xCloud impressions on the Beastcast) and I think both the PS5 and Xbox are going to sell quite well for the time being.

@hodor: I'd be more optimistic. Look at Obsidian as the example. They never would have made a game like Grounded because they were a bad game or two sway from shuttering. But now that MS owns them, they have a safety net and can innovate to bring unique titles all while making gamepass great.