Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/21/microsoft-buys-game-giant-bethesda-for-7-5bn.html
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Coming soon, The Elder Scrolls VI: Minecraft
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Well, at least you can go in and out of buildings with the Minecraft engine without having to stare at a loading screen. 
Seriously, it would be great if there is a chance that something makes Bethesda sack that terrible engine they’ve been using for far too long and ships their IP to another platform.
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I don’t know whether to like or flag this…
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Oh god when these two powerhouses get linked together it’s almost inconceivable how many bugs they’ll be able to cram in.
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Very interesting…
“His younger brother Robert Trump has been on the board of the Bethesda, Maryland-based producer of games like Doom, Rage and Fallout since at least 2007. The board also includes Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS Chairman Les Moonves and former baseball great Cal Ripken Jr., according to its website.”
Also…
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More than Fallout 76 already has?
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Jeez, it’s like Disney buying Nuka World. 2020 has no limits on how it will vex me.
We must remember, as Fawkes told us, “Be aware of the present moment. THERE IS SAFETY IN MINDFULNESS.”
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That seems really high, but what do I know.
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If this means more marquee single player storytelling and less Fallout 76, great.
If this means more insane boondoggles like Fallout 76, ugh.
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I dunno. Microsoft seems to be pegging things more on interesting single player than most of your big companies. Kinda shows in the devs they’ve been snapping up the last few years. And their take on games as service is more a literal service that gives you access to a lot of games than loot boxy gambling machines and microtransations.
But most of this is so recent we haven’t seen a shit ton come out from all their new in-house folks.
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Honestly this was my assumption too. And it makes sense to compete with Playstation’s marquee titles.
My sort of knee jerk reaction is that we’re getting to the point where there are two kinds of AAA games:
- Giant single player, system moving experiences from either 1st party developers or developers who have been paid for console exclusivity for specific titles.
- Games as service multiplayer microtransaction hellscapes
Fallout 76 was Bethesda dipping their toes into #2. Doubt it’ll continue now but you never know.
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I’ll assume this is to take their catalog away from Sony more so than to recoup the money for the IP.
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My immediate selfish response is to wonder if Microsoft will back Dishonored 3. Bethesda made it clear that stealth games didn’t sell well enough, and so Dishonored was on indefinite hiatus following Death of the Outsider. I wonder if Microsoft will feel differently.
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Good, let them burn through Microsoft’s bottomless fortunes making AAA sequels and new IP’s.
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Not exactly the news I wanted to hear after getting lucky with my PS5 pre-order.
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I’m not even so sure about that. Microsoft bought Double Fine a ways back, their first big release with MS will be Psychonauts 2 and they’re apparently still running on a small and weird model. MS also snapped up a number of niche developers of like sims and strategy games.
Their whole take on this is quite strange comparatively. Much of their talk with the new console has been “we don’t believe in exclusives”. Which makes sense. Microsoft owns the major PC platform, a lot of base tech. They’ve been heavily involved in industry wide efforts on shit like graphics and standards. They’ve got probably the widest used graphics API.
Exclusives are only really useful in so far as they sell hardware, and thus create lock in. But Microsoft’s entire business is already pretty hardware independent, and it’s becoming clear that far more money is to be made from large volume sales cross platform. Game Pass gets them vendor lock in just fine.
Double Fine’s Tim Schaefer has talked about how Double Fine’s games aren’t the sort of thing people will pay full retail price for. So the Game Pass approach is apparently an answer there, smaller games funded as part of the subscription service. So they aren’t as reliant on retail sales. A bit like TV vs movies.
Likewise the indy scene has been absolutely critical to the growth in PC gaming the last decade, and were an important piece for some of the past Xboxes. Apparently Microsoft’s biggest gaming cash cow currently is Minecraft.
We’re not going to really see how this pans out for a couple years at least. But Microsoft seems to be talking about an entirely different response to the shortcomings of the current games business than everyone else.
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You make several very good points that some friends made to me as well this morning. They put an even finer point on it: Microsoft is hedging their bets that eventually console gaming won’t be a thing and spreading their resources widely as a result. They brought up streaming as an eventual part of this equation too.
It is definitely an interesting moment in time and it’ll be interesting to see how all this pans out.
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I hope so. As an owner of an Intel iMac that has to switch to an ARM iMac in a year or two streaming will probably be my only chance to enjoy non-console gaming down the line.
Same, honestly. Although I have to admit that the new entry level xbox’s financing plan includes Gamepass and is cheap enough for me to consider.
