Microsoft buys Zenimax for $7.5b

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Given how bad many of Bethesda's last few offerings have been I can't help but think things will improve ... because if they get much worse Bethesda might as well close their doors.
Yea, I have considered bethesda to be closed for a very long time now. I remember playing skyrim and thinking "wait, something is wrong here" and slowly coming to the realization that I wasn't having fun. Even after heavily modding skyrim, it still feels the same. It's one of the only games I can say that mods seemingly had no effect on. From there things truly got much worse in a variety of ways. :giveup:
 
Guess I'll buy both ps5 and Xbox :shrug:
Wow, not judging or anything, but just curious. Aren't those about $500 each? And then there's the online subscription fees for each. Then the games that are supposedly going to be $70 each? In a few years, you could have purchased a new car! :eek: Again, not judging, just... watching and commenting and being surprised, and interested, and curious. But mostly shocked. Lol. Hey to each their own.
 
Wow, not judging or anything, but just curious. Aren't those about $500 each? And then there's the online subscription fees for each. Then the games that are supposedly going to be $70 each? In a few years, you could have purchased a new car! :eek: Again, not judging, just... watching and commenting and being surprised, and interested, and curious. But mostly shocked. Lol. Hey to each their own.
I bought ps5 for 240€ (sold ps4 and 3 for 260 at Gamestop on Saturday).
I would subscribe only to Xbox (10€/month) and not every month.
I'd buy only few games, the rest is on gamepass.
I just bought an OLED TV (lgb955) for 1050€, it'll last for 10 years.

I don't know your age or salary (you don't need to share it) but once you work and don't have children, with an average salary 500€ to play for 7 years are not much. :)
And still cheaper than a good gaming rig.

Also, I've lived in Sweden for a couple of years and every freaking time I wanted a beer I had to spend 10€. Just imagine a normal night out. Goddamn, I've lost perception of value of money after that. :ROFLMAO:
Thank god stuff is cheaper for me now...

EDIT: I forgot, I'm not buying the Xbox right now. I'll wait for some time and strongly tempted by series s which costs only 300€
 
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(I apologize for using the google translator. I can read English quite well, but I can't write at all)

I am delighted with this news. But I cannot explain why. I have never liked Microsoft. But now they are actively developing their gaming division and I like it. Hopefully they won't interfere with the studios very much and give them creative freedom with good funding. Then we will have a lot of good games.
 
I bought ps5 for 240€ (sold ps4 and 3 for 260 at Gamestop on Saturday).
I would subscribe only to Xbox (10€/month) and not every month.
I'd buy only few games, the rest is on gamepass.
I just bought an OLED TV (lgb955) for 1050€, it'll last for 10 years.

I don't know your age or salary (you don't need to share it) but once you work and don't have children, with an average salary 500€ to play for 7 years are not much. :)
And still cheaper than a good gaming rig.

Also, I've lived in Sweden for a couple of years and every freaking time I wanted a beer I had to spend 10€. Just imagine a normal night out. Goddamn, I've lost perception of value of money after that. :ROFLMAO:
Thank god stuff is cheaper for me now...

EDIT: I forgot, I'm not buying the Xbox right now. I'll wait for some time and strongly tempted by series s which costs only 300€
Hey there, I replied to you and my post disappeared. I got no notifications of any deletions or post movements to other threads so I'm assuming it's a glitch, but I worry it wasn't, so I wont try to remake my previous post in case a moderator thought it was better to delete it for some reason, but I wont get into that. What I will do, in good faith is make a smaller shorter reply to you that is different from the previous one. To keep it short and simple I'm glad for you that you are doing better now than before. That is good news, and I hope for you success with your console buying endeavors. :)
 
Microsoft has been acquiring studios a lot lately.

I wonder how long, until there are only M$ and Sony...

Cannot happen. U.S antitrust laws would be applicable long before it got to that point. It didn’t trigger on this sale because it is vertical integration, but once a company owns too much market share then the equation changes.
 
Cannot happen. U.S antitrust laws would be applicable long before it got to that point. It didn’t trigger on this sale because it is vertical integration, but once a company owns too much market share then the equation changes.

Ah, ok. I didn’t know about that legislation.
 
Cannot happen. U.S antitrust laws would be applicable long before it got to that point. It didn’t trigger on this sale because it is vertical integration, but once a company owns too much market share then the equation changes.

Anti-trust laws are completely toothless. MS has been running amok with anti-competitive behavior for years, and the most they got was a slap on their hand.

If anything, anti-trust should have prevented them from buying Zenimax in the first place. But it didn't. Same goes for Nvidia buying ARM or Comcast swallowing NBC or Charter eating Warner Cable and so on and so forth. Anti-trust is a joke these days and it's simply used as a tool by politicians at times to target their opponents, not as a method to keep the market competitive.
 
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Monopolies are never good for the industry and definitely not consumers so these big companies buying up everything they can get their hands on is never a good sign
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Cannot happen. U.S antitrust laws would be applicable long before it got to that point. It didn’t trigger on this sale because it is vertical integration, but once a company owns too much market share then the equation changes.
Cannot? It's been happening. Almost every E3 for the past few years there's been an announcement of an acquisition and its not even just gaming. Disney, Amazon...US antitrust laws are either way behind or it's agenda is no longer the same.
 
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Moderator: Hey there, all -- just a friendly reminder to, please, tread lightly around politics and political issues. Discussing the gaming industry is fine, but try not to wander too far afield. Thanks.
 
This is bad, but as someone who doesn't own any consoles, it's not as bad as if Sony had bought Zenimax. As far is MS goes... On one hand, I like that MS at least releases games on PC, and releases them concurrently with consoles. On the other hand, I don't like proprietary APIs.

I think consoles are slowly becoming less irrelevant over time, especially with the mobile gaming market shaking things up. The ideal scenario in my opinion is if this continues to the point that all studios find it financially better to remain independent, not take exclusivity bribes, and instead release their games on all platforms. Thank goodness CDPR is doing exactly this :ok:
 
Well, so far CDPR don't really look too independent of MS to me. They went with DX12 for the Windows version and didn't announce Linux version of CP2077. That's a pretty big dependency on MS in practice. MS are sneaky and control things in many ways, besides simply buying studios. API and platform lock-in is one such way.

Once we'll see CP2077 for Linux and using Vulkan, then we can conclude CDPR release for all platforms and are indeed independent of MS.
 
Well, so far CDPR don't really look too independent of MS to me. They went with DX12 for the Windows version and didn't announce Linux version of CP2077. That's a pretty big dependency on MS in practice. MS are sneaky and control things in many ways, besides simply buying studios. API and platform lock-in is one such way.

Once we'll see CP2077 for Linux and using Vulkan, then we can conclude CDPR release for all platforms and are indeed independent of MS.

This is true. It would be nice if I didn't have to dual boot Windows.
 
Well, so far CDPR don't really look too independent of MS to me. They went with DX12 for the Windows version and didn't announce Linux version of CP2077. That's a pretty big dependency on MS in practice. MS are sneaky and control things in many ways, besides simply buying studios. API and platform lock-in is one such way.

Once we'll see CP2077 for Linux and using Vulkan, then we can conclude CDPR release for all platforms and are indeed independent of MS.

They can be, but they honestly do support the studios they purchase...for a while at least. I'd say the biggest problem Microsoft has as a company is its size. I've mentioned this before, but I went into their headquarters in Dubai at one point. It was a huge building. Easily over a thousand employees working at that location, I'd say. Had an interesting chat with the rep that met with us.

No one else in the corporation had any idea about what this location was doing. He was explaining that it was like that all over the world. Microsoft branches could be as different as night and day. Policies and procedures, security, the focus of projects, partnerships, etc. Like every major branch had its own satellites working like their own, independent companies. In fact, he said that pretty much the only time he had any contact with the global branch each year was when they sent their fiscal reports and got a response.

So, I'd be loath to pass judgement on what this purchase might mean. Arguably, I'm expecting this will translate into a bit of a tighter ship being run on the production, design, and development end, and likely some smart innovations made with the gameplay in the next Elder Scrolls release. Maybe, players will even see Fallout 76 brought to a state that could be considered respectable in the face of other MMOs.

One thing I think is evident between FO4, FO76, and ES:O is that both Zenimax and Bethesda have fallen into a rut. Maybe Zeni was just smart enough to recognize it and recommit themselves to striving for real quality and innovations. (And they'll probably have access to Microsoft's QA! Which isn't exactly a promise of aged steak and fine wine, but I would bet it's noticeably better than Zeni/Beth in-house QA.)
 
They can be, but they honestly do support the studios they purchase...for a while at least. I'd say the biggest problem Microsoft has as a company is its size.

I sure agree, that left hand might not know what the right one is doing in MS :) They have divisions which are way more Linux and industry friendly in general. For instance they supported Alliance for Open Media way before Apple did, which is quite not like MS from the '90s. So they are behind AV1 (and future AVx) video codecs.

But in the gaming context it's really driven by Phil Spencer who is the head of their Xbox division (or whatever it's really called). And I think we can assume he can make such decisions as to whether they need to push DirectX lock-in or support Vulkan instead and how hostile they have to be to Linux gaming market, DRM-free releases and so on. It's basically him.

And from what I can see, their gaming division is pretty nasty, not much has improved since their '90s lock-in approach there. All this "MS is new now" that Nadela supposedly tried to PR and "MS loves Linux" completely passed that part of MS by.
 
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