Early this morning, Phil Spencer announced that Microsoft will be entering a deal to purchase Zenimax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. Microsoft and Xbox have made a lot of big acquisitions in the last few years but this is by far the biggest to date. This acquisition includes 2300 people that work for studios like id Software, Bethesda Softworks, Arkane, Tango Gameworks, and more. With a purchase price of 7.5 billion dollars, Microsoft had to see a lot of value in the company. Phil Spencer and Satya Nadella have been making huge moves when it comes to Microsoft and it’s gaming division. So what does this mean in the short term? Well, all games that fall under Bethesda are coming to Gamepass. The value of the Gamepass service just continues to increase. Also, any games that already had deals to be released on other platforms will still release there. This is similar to the deal Microsoft made when purchasing Mojang.
In the long term, there are still a lot of unknowns. Will sequels to previous games be released on other consoles? Are there new IPs that are being developed that will now be exclusives to the Xbox family? We still do not know. There is a lot of information to digest here. We are sure we will get more information in the near future. Some people may not see this as a good thing but now they have the budget of Microsoft backing them. This could help greatly in the quality of the products that the various studios release.
Xbox now has a lot of IPs under their umbrella. We can’t wait to see what this deal means for the future. We will continue to provide more information as it becomes available.
