6 ms·

And what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase? Seriously, Microsoft is buy all these game studios and fail to utilize them probably. They own all the IP

And what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase? Seriously, Microsoft is buy all these game studios and fail to utilize them probably. They own all the IP required to do a followup to Fallout New Vegas and NOTHING.

mcpackieh 3y ago
They'll start making nostalgia bait cash grabs soon enough when they think gamers are ripe for it.
- delecti 3y ago
  That they don't already think gamers are ripe for it shows how bad they are at making games people want to buy/play.
Night_Thastus 3y ago
Microsoft will likely just let them keep operating as they do now, providing money and reaping any profits. They'll only step in directly if the studios are having problems they can't handle themselves, or performing very poorly. They want the profit, not as much to direct everything on a micro-level. EDIT: They will of course make more titles Windows/XBox exclusive too, which makes sense considering the investment.
- southwesterly 3y ago
  Until enshittification. And then they’ll be hollowed out.
  - Night_Thastus 3y ago
    Very unlikely. Again, MS just wants the profits. If a studio is doing well, they don't want to touch it. They want a steady revenue stream. They'll only step in if the studio is floundering and their couple releases have been flops. Then they'll offer direction, and shut them down if they can't fix it. That's what we've seen from MS so far, and it makes the most sense from their perspective.
    - malfist 3y ago
      > MS just wants the profits. Are you sure about that? MS required Starfield to be exclusive after purchasing Bethesda
      - Night_Thastus 3y ago
        Well of course. They're spending a lot of money, why wouldn't they make the titles of anything they acquire be Xbox/Windows exclusive? That increases their profits. More people buy Xboxes, more people are on their platform, etc. They have some contractual obligations that prevent them from doing it for everything, but they'll do it for anything they can. That's just business sense.
        pword 3y ago
        [flagged]
        Hamuko 3y ago
        >why wouldn't they make the titles of anything they acquire be Xbox/Windows exclusive? "[Microsoft] submits that Microsoft has strong incentives to continue making ZeniMax games available for rival consoles (and their related storefronts). [...] Therefore, according to [Microsoft], Microsoft would not have the incentive to cease or limit making ZeniMax games available for purchase on rival consoles." https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases1/202124/m10001_438_3.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases1/202124/m1000...
        Night_Thastus 3y ago
        There may be some edge cases, but frankly I view it as typical corporate BS. They were just making statements like that hoping that the deal would go through. Everything that they are legally able to, from now on, will most likely be MS exclusive.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    What does this mean in this context? Relying on microtransactions to hook whales? Releasing poor/rehashed products? Collecting huge amounts of personal data without permission to play a game that requires none of it? I think we're way past "until"...
- edgyquant 3y ago
  No they want to buy a monopoly since they couldn’t earn one.
  - Night_Thastus 3y ago
    How is that incompatible with what I said? Most of all, MS wants a steady revenue stream. Buying lots of studios helps even out any less profitable titles that come out. Now, they will likely make more titles Xbox/windows exclusive. That's expected.
- trelane 3y ago
  > Microsoft will likely just let them keep operating as they do now, providing money and reaping any profits. Yeah, it's not like Microsoft ever bought a game studio that was making a highly-anticipated game, then made them release it as an XBox / PC Exclusive or anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(franchise) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(franchise) https://www.halopedia.org/Halo:_Combat_Evolved_for_Macintosh https://www.halopedia.org/Halo:_Combat_Evolved_for_Macintosh
wins32767 3y ago
At the minimum, avoiding getting locked out of console exclusives.
bpiche 3y ago
The game of games
ascagnel_ 3y ago
Just because they own all the pieces (the Fallout franchise, the engine Bethesda created for F:NV, Obsidian Entertainment) doesn't mean there's a workable concept for the game. Obsidian put out two games in the past two-ish years: Grounded (a co-op survival shooter) and Pentiment (a point-and-click murder mystery set in the middle ages). Both were well-received. In addition, Obsidian has also announced The Outer Worlds 2, a sequel to a game that (fairly or unfairly) was compared to F:NV.
- braymundo 3y ago
  Pentiment is a masterpiece.
  - koshergweilo 3y ago
    It also never would have been released without gamepass, so we have some evidence that Microsoft acquisitions don't all end terribly
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      Obsidian has said in interviews that Grounded was also the sort of game that they would pitch and pitch for years and get rejection after rejection and probably wouldn't have happened without Game Pass. No one wanted a "co-op shooter with tower defense elements" from "an RPG company", especially with such a wild setting/theme, but Game Pass let them experiment and play so long as they made some "live service" concessions to get people to dip in/out over multiple months of Game Pass. Obsidian seems to be thriving under Microsoft, doing all sorts of crazy things that their previous history hinted at that they were capable of but never had the resources or the publisher buy-in to explore. It's fascinating to watch so far. I'm curious to see what they do with the bigger budgets of Avowed and Outer Worlds 2.
opportune 3y ago
They haven’t owned Bethesda for very long so I think it’s fair that they haven’t released a F:NV successor yet. I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” Regarding at least the Blizzard side of the acquisition, I feel like Microsoft ownership may end up being a good thing for their underused IP. Microsoft has strong incentives to release RTS (StarCraft, Warcraft) games to bolster PC usage for gaming and maybe bring more attention to the Windows Store (IMO forcing minecraft onto the Store was a blunder as the upgrade experience was fucking terrible) if they choose to use it.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  > I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” The rumor mill suggests the opposite is true. Bethesda intended to ship the game over a year ago and Microsoft delayed it to make sure it wasn't the next No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    This aligns with my sense of the culture of these orgs at this point. Bethesda continues to ride on the ideas of talent hired-and-fired much more than a decade ago.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    >Microsoft delayed it to make sure it wasn't the next No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk. I wish it was the next Cyberpunk. I've gone back and forth between Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 / Phantom Liberty and Starfield, and I like Cyberpunk 2077 so much better. It looks better, it has a way more captivating story, it has so much more interesting characters and it just plays much nicer.
    - 37871808 3y ago
      On release, CyberPunk 2077 was so bad that CD Projekt issued an apology and offered refunds. The previous poster's entire point was delaying Starfield to make sure it didn't end up like CyberPunk 1.0. I don't get the comparison between Starfield 1.0 and CyberPunk 2.0. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/cyberpunk-2077-glitch-refunds/ https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/cyberpunk-2077-glitch-refun...
WillPostForFood 3y ago
They've owned Bethesda for a couple years, what are you expecting? They put out Starfield, New elder scrolls is in pre-production, and have said a new Fallout is next.
fifticon 3y ago
it is also about buying users for their ecosystem, "life lock in". my kid is already a microsoft user with an ms account, just because she wants to play minecraft. consider all the other usecases she will 'slide' into, because she already has that ms live/office365 account.
hoten 3y ago
I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but I still hold a grudge against MS for seemingly destroying Rare. I never really looked into it but at a younger age I understood MS bought them and then they never made another actual Banjo game, which I always assumed wouldn't have happened sans acquisition.
- endemic 3y ago
  I thought this article (https://www.eurogamer.net/who-killed-rare https://www.eurogamer.net/who-killed-rare) was pretty insightful.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  Rare still exists and I think seems to be at the top of their game. Nuts & Bolts was a good Banjo game and close enough to "actual" for me. Sure, all the "building" mechanics were silly, but all the classic platforming was still there and the building mechanics just added more collectathons to series infatuated with collectathons. That felt very true to Banjo-Kazooie to me. Rare's love affair with Kinect and building a lot of Kinect games would have never been questioned if it was a love affair with the Wii in the same time. Similarly, overlooked treasures like Kameo and Viva Pinata would probably have tons of fans if they had released on Nintendo platforms. Rare Replay reminded me that Rare has done three big pirate games in their history plus one of the most beloved sections of Banjo-Kazooie is pirate themed, so Sea of Thieves is just about the "Most Rare" that Rare has ever been. It's a delightful game and deserves the following that it has now. Hopefully "Safer Seas" in December will open up Sea of Thieves for more children and family play and for more players that can't yet see past the open-PvP to all the delightful Rare details and treasures inside.
  - hoten 3y ago
    I surely didn't give Bolts a fair shake, and never played any other titles after feeling I "lost" Banjo. I certainly need to try some of their other titles. Thanks for the recs
TechSquidTV 3y ago
It hasn't been anywhere near long enough to ask what Microsoft is doing or has done with that IP, they JUST got their hands on it.
chainwax 3y ago
A Fallout 3 remaster is in the works. https://www.ign.com/articles/oblivion-remaster-fallout-3-remaster-and-more-leaked-from-microsoft-document https://www.ign.com/articles/oblivion-remaster-fallout-3-rem...
w0m 3y ago
My theory is Mobile gaming (King) was the key here. Outside of that it's simply to try and narrow the (surprisingly large) Exclusives gap Sony has been enjoying the last decade or so. > They own all the IP required to do a followup to Fallout New Vegas and NOTHING I mean - didn't the team that would work on that launch Starfield in the last month?
- burnte 3y ago
  > I mean - didn't the team that would work on that launch Starfield in the last month? Yep. Although one could argue there are are other studios who could be tapped to make a sequel.
  - deprecative 3y ago
    No, actually. New Vegas was not developed by Bethesda. It was published by Bethesda. It was developed by Obsidian which Microsoft also owns.
- muwtyhg 3y ago
  Starfield was developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Fallout: New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks.
waynesonfire 3y ago
> And what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase? MSFT will ensure that every possible MSFT product is adopted by the entire Activision organization.
froggertoaster 3y ago
Aren't you being ever so slightly myopic? That is one game out of literal dozens.

mcpackieh 3y ago

They'll start making nostalgia bait cash grabs soon enough when they think gamers are ripe for it.

delecti 3y ago
That they don't already think gamers are ripe for it shows how bad they are at making games people want to buy/play.

Night_Thastus 3y ago

Microsoft will likely just let them keep operating as they do now, providing money and reaping any profits. They'll only step in directly if the studios are having problems they can't handle themselves, or performing very poorly. They want the profit, not as much to direct everything on a micro-level. EDIT: They will of course make more titles Windows/XBox exclusive too, which makes sense considering the investment.

southwesterly 3y ago
Until enshittification. And then they’ll be hollowed out.
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  Very unlikely. Again, MS just wants the profits. If a studio is doing well, they don't want to touch it. They want a steady revenue stream. They'll only step in if the studio is floundering and their couple releases have been flops. Then they'll offer direction, and shut them down if they can't fix it. That's what we've seen from MS so far, and it makes the most sense from their perspective.
  - malfist 3y ago
    > MS just wants the profits. Are you sure about that? MS required Starfield to be exclusive after purchasing Bethesda
    - Night_Thastus 3y ago
      Well of course. They're spending a lot of money, why wouldn't they make the titles of anything they acquire be Xbox/Windows exclusive? That increases their profits. More people buy Xboxes, more people are on their platform, etc. They have some contractual obligations that prevent them from doing it for everything, but they'll do it for anything they can. That's just business sense.
      - pword 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - Hamuko 3y ago
        >why wouldn't they make the titles of anything they acquire be Xbox/Windows exclusive? "[Microsoft] submits that Microsoft has strong incentives to continue making ZeniMax games available for rival consoles (and their related storefronts). [...] Therefore, according to [Microsoft], Microsoft would not have the incentive to cease or limit making ZeniMax games available for purchase on rival consoles." https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases1/202124/m10001_438_3.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases1/202124/m1000...
        Night_Thastus 3y ago
        There may be some edge cases, but frankly I view it as typical corporate BS. They were just making statements like that hoping that the deal would go through. Everything that they are legally able to, from now on, will most likely be MS exclusive.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  What does this mean in this context? Relying on microtransactions to hook whales? Releasing poor/rehashed products? Collecting huge amounts of personal data without permission to play a game that requires none of it? I think we're way past "until"...
edgyquant 3y ago
No they want to buy a monopoly since they couldn’t earn one.
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  How is that incompatible with what I said? Most of all, MS wants a steady revenue stream. Buying lots of studios helps even out any less profitable titles that come out. Now, they will likely make more titles Xbox/windows exclusive. That's expected.
trelane 3y ago
> Microsoft will likely just let them keep operating as they do now, providing money and reaping any profits. Yeah, it's not like Microsoft ever bought a game studio that was making a highly-anticipated game, then made them release it as an XBox / PC Exclusive or anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(franchise) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_(franchise) https://www.halopedia.org/Halo:_Combat_Evolved_for_Macintosh https://www.halopedia.org/Halo:_Combat_Evolved_for_Macintosh

wins32767 3y ago

At the minimum, avoiding getting locked out of console exclusives.

bpiche 3y ago

The game of games

ascagnel_ 3y ago

Just because they own all the pieces (the Fallout franchise, the engine Bethesda created for F:NV, Obsidian Entertainment) doesn't mean there's a workable concept for the game. Obsidian put out two games in the past two-ish years: Grounded (a co-op survival shooter) and Pentiment (a point-and-click murder mystery set in the middle ages). Both were well-received. In addition, Obsidian has also announced The Outer Worlds 2, a sequel to a game that (fairly or unfairly) was compared to F:NV.

braymundo 3y ago
Pentiment is a masterpiece.
- koshergweilo 3y ago
  It also never would have been released without gamepass, so we have some evidence that Microsoft acquisitions don't all end terribly
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Obsidian has said in interviews that Grounded was also the sort of game that they would pitch and pitch for years and get rejection after rejection and probably wouldn't have happened without Game Pass. No one wanted a "co-op shooter with tower defense elements" from "an RPG company", especially with such a wild setting/theme, but Game Pass let them experiment and play so long as they made some "live service" concessions to get people to dip in/out over multiple months of Game Pass. Obsidian seems to be thriving under Microsoft, doing all sorts of crazy things that their previous history hinted at that they were capable of but never had the resources or the publisher buy-in to explore. It's fascinating to watch so far. I'm curious to see what they do with the bigger budgets of Avowed and Outer Worlds 2.

opportune 3y ago

They haven’t owned Bethesda for very long so I think it’s fair that they haven’t released a F:NV successor yet. I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” Regarding at least the Blizzard side of the acquisition, I feel like Microsoft ownership may end up being a good thing for their underused IP. Microsoft has strong incentives to release RTS (StarCraft, Warcraft) games to bolster PC usage for gaming and maybe bring more attention to the Windows Store (IMO forcing minecraft onto the Store was a blunder as the upgrade experience was fucking terrible) if they choose to use it.

babypuncher 3y ago
> I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” The rumor mill suggests the opposite is true. Bethesda intended to ship the game over a year ago and Microsoft delayed it to make sure it wasn't the next No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  This aligns with my sense of the culture of these orgs at this point. Bethesda continues to ride on the ideas of talent hired-and-fired much more than a decade ago.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  >Microsoft delayed it to make sure it wasn't the next No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk. I wish it was the next Cyberpunk. I've gone back and forth between Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 / Phantom Liberty and Starfield, and I like Cyberpunk 2077 so much better. It looks better, it has a way more captivating story, it has so much more interesting characters and it just plays much nicer.
  - 37871808 3y ago
    On release, CyberPunk 2077 was so bad that CD Projekt issued an apology and offered refunds. The previous poster's entire point was delaying Starfield to make sure it didn't end up like CyberPunk 1.0. I don't get the comparison between Starfield 1.0 and CyberPunk 2.0. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/cyberpunk-2077-glitch-refunds/ https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/cyberpunk-2077-glitch-refun...

WillPostForFood 3y ago

They've owned Bethesda for a couple years, what are you expecting? They put out Starfield, New elder scrolls is in pre-production, and have said a new Fallout is next.

fifticon 3y ago

it is also about buying users for their ecosystem, "life lock in". my kid is already a microsoft user with an ms account, just because she wants to play minecraft. consider all the other usecases she will 'slide' into, because she already has that ms live/office365 account.

hoten 3y ago

I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but I still hold a grudge against MS for seemingly destroying Rare. I never really looked into it but at a younger age I understood MS bought them and then they never made another actual Banjo game, which I always assumed wouldn't have happened sans acquisition.

endemic 3y ago
I thought this article (https://www.eurogamer.net/who-killed-rare https://www.eurogamer.net/who-killed-rare) was pretty insightful.
WorldMaker 3y ago
Rare still exists and I think seems to be at the top of their game. Nuts & Bolts was a good Banjo game and close enough to "actual" for me. Sure, all the "building" mechanics were silly, but all the classic platforming was still there and the building mechanics just added more collectathons to series infatuated with collectathons. That felt very true to Banjo-Kazooie to me. Rare's love affair with Kinect and building a lot of Kinect games would have never been questioned if it was a love affair with the Wii in the same time. Similarly, overlooked treasures like Kameo and Viva Pinata would probably have tons of fans if they had released on Nintendo platforms. Rare Replay reminded me that Rare has done three big pirate games in their history plus one of the most beloved sections of Banjo-Kazooie is pirate themed, so Sea of Thieves is just about the "Most Rare" that Rare has ever been. It's a delightful game and deserves the following that it has now. Hopefully "Safer Seas" in December will open up Sea of Thieves for more children and family play and for more players that can't yet see past the open-PvP to all the delightful Rare details and treasures inside.
- hoten 3y ago
  I surely didn't give Bolts a fair shake, and never played any other titles after feeling I "lost" Banjo. I certainly need to try some of their other titles. Thanks for the recs

TechSquidTV 3y ago

It hasn't been anywhere near long enough to ask what Microsoft is doing or has done with that IP, they JUST got their hands on it.

chainwax 3y ago

A Fallout 3 remaster is in the works. https://www.ign.com/articles/oblivion-remaster-fallout-3-remaster-and-more-leaked-from-microsoft-document https://www.ign.com/articles/oblivion-remaster-fallout-3-rem...

w0m 3y ago

My theory is Mobile gaming (King) was the key here. Outside of that it's simply to try and narrow the (surprisingly large) Exclusives gap Sony has been enjoying the last decade or so. > They own all the IP required to do a followup to Fallout New Vegas and NOTHING I mean - didn't the team that would work on that launch Starfield in the last month?

burnte 3y ago
> I mean - didn't the team that would work on that launch Starfield in the last month? Yep. Although one could argue there are are other studios who could be tapped to make a sequel.
- deprecative 3y ago
  No, actually. New Vegas was not developed by Bethesda. It was published by Bethesda. It was developed by Obsidian which Microsoft also owns.
muwtyhg 3y ago
Starfield was developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Fallout: New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks.

waynesonfire 3y ago

> And what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase? MSFT will ensure that every possible MSFT product is adopted by the entire Activision organization.

froggertoaster 3y ago

Aren't you being ever so slightly myopic? That is one game out of literal dozens.