So Microsoft just bought Bethesda

Yeah 5 years may be too soon for some regions. Also I don't think that game streaming will change the way people like us play games for a long while. Hobbyists will continue to invest in hardware and games. I mean I still buy movies on Blu-ray and go to the cinema regularly, but most people seem quite satisfied with relying on the offering of streaming services like Netflix.

However for more casual folks who don't care as much about latency, I can see streaming taking off like wildfire. Let's not forget that mobile devices are the most popular gaming platforms in the world and they don't exactly offer the same sort of experiences as a PC or new console. While I can't see myself not owning a gaming PC and a couple of consoles in the future, I wouldn't reject the idea of streaming some games here and there when I'm not at home or when I just want to try something quickly without an upfront install.

@justin258: Against is the wrong word to use. It's just a case of preference. I have always preferred the Sony exclusives over the Microsoft exclusives. And I just enjoy the ease of console gaming. So I'm sticking with consoles.

It would be more expensive for me to acquire a good PC tower and screen for PC gaming than to just buy a new console. And I still wouldn't be able to play the Playstation exclusive titles so that doesn't benefit me to go that route.

And sure the price of the big AAA games goes up, which sucks, but I honestly don't game as much as I used to so price difference for PC games and console games is not enough for me to justify PC gaming. Not even in the long run.

In the end I think this kind of bought exclusivity sucks cause it hurts the consumer in the end. It would be the same if Sony bought a big game publisher/developer and now their games can only be played on the next PS console.

I understand why companies like Microsoft and Sony buys multiplatform companies and make them exclusive partners, but in the end it only hurts and divides the consumers more than it does good.

EDIT: For example I find Sony's exclusivity over Spider-Man fuckin' kuh-razy. It sucks that people won't get to play as Spider-Man in the new Avengers game if they are not playing it on PS4. That sucks as well.

The news feels bigger than the actual impact this is going to have for a long time. Microsoft acquired a ton of studios a year or so back as well and we are yet to see anything out of them. Bethesda is probably good 4 - 5 years from making another game, so it just won't matter.

And I very much doubt they would make the next AAA from any of those studios exclusive. Games cost way too much money (and only going to cost more) to limit the market you're selling to. Selling a small percentage of that market a box along with the game doesn't seem like it'll cancel out getting a cut on PS5 sales in addition to Xbox, Game Pass and PC.

The real question is what does Game Pass turns into when it actually becomes Netflix of games. Just about every Netflix show nowadays has the same general vibe and aesthetics, just with a different coat of paint. Does Microsoft mandate their studios make "the Game Pass game"? Sure, there is a lot of money being thrown at it right now, because they need to cement the service, but what happens once thats done? We've seen what that did to mobile market, where every game became a carbon copy of Idle-PvP-gatcha-clicker-waifu-hero-thing.

I don't think you can homogenise games like that. People come to properties for specific reasons. Lord knows Ubisoft try and EA leverage Frostbite as much as they can.

@afael: Zenimax isn’t just Bethesda, they have other studios working on big stuff that will come out in the next year or so. Stuff like Wolfenstein III and whatever Arkane is working on post-Deathloop. But I do agree that they will likely keep the big stuff multi platform, although perhaps with timed exclusivity for Xbox.

@afael: do you realize Bethesda has Death Loop and Ghost Wire Tokyo already on the way very soon? Those aren't far off and Bethesda puts a lot of games out. I think you're just thinking of Elder Scrolls games.

As well as they've been developing Starfield, their next big thing, for years now.

MS bought Lionhead 14 years ago and Rare 18 years ago. Maybe it seems more recently to you but its been a long time.

I mean, plenty of bad games acquisitions but this was not remotely recently and not under Phil. They've been doing a good job lately and until they don't I'll be happy with their work. This clearly is not the same Xbox that was pushing Kinect.

Its a big get for Microsoft, and really helps with there "no good games" problem. But this only effects me in that i might have to upgrade my PC when the new Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom etc. come out depending on if MS locks these to an Xbox, which i already prefer to play these games on PC if it is capable. And even then i can just pay $10 here and there to play those games on PC gamepass or probably still buy them on Steam. And i get why big companies pay for exclusive stuff on there platform, but it does suck for consumers who have been consuming that content for so long to now be locked away from it. So im cautiously optimistic that some of the older big IP's will still be on other consoles, but Starfield or newer games will probably only be on Xbox.

@toughshed: @navster15:

Yup, I know about those 2. And I love Dishonored, so on the bright side, maybe Arkane gets the money to make Dishonored 3. However, those games are on far lower scale and won't be the huge exclusive bombshells akin to next Elder Scrolls or Starfield. Maybe I'm far too on the sceptical side and you are both right in that smaller scale games move the needle more than I think they do on the larger picture of "gets".

@afael: yeah I really don't know yet but my hope, as I mentioned in a previous post in this thread, is that the Gamepass model allows riskier and more niche games like a Dishonored to be able to get made without needing to live or die based on their initial sales. The volatile nature of sales and game budgets makes any misses potentially something that could sink your company.

I've been encouraged by how they've pushed stuff like Grounded and Wasteland 3. They could be putting those teams to work on bigger games but it feels like they're letting them experiment and make niche stuff like a CRPG or a survival game that might potentially hit big.

@toughshed: I have the same hope, my main concern is that they are letting anything go right now since the service needs games. VR platforms threw money around the launch to try and create a library, but once they stopped the 'genre' immediately shrunk to few "proven" formulas.

The "Netflix of games" they are chasing is what Im worried about since what does well on Netflix dictates what Netflix buys and creates (revolutionary thought, I know). There is a separation of the platform and its product that Game Pass might lack and which will result in the same issue current Netflix model has - if you're not somewhere within the "vibe" of their current direction, you're not on it. And like some people have mentioned in this thread, Game Pass warps the way we interact with games. If in few years Game Pass decides that fantasy action games do well for their retention, what happens to games that don't fit? The anecdote of Destiny 1 and "fantasy doesn't sell" leading to its retooling into a sci-fi comes to mind and boy was that a tire fire. Or Anthem, that was clearly designed in EA's "monetize dem teenz" lab. And the rest of the industry might get affected in the "why pay 70$ for anything if I can just Game Pass", which could create a complete opposite effect and less weird experimental games.

Granted, these are all just hypothetical 'cause its fun to theorize on the topic. I guess there is also the Mixer option, where after sinking a bunch of money MS decides it was a wee bit a bad idea and just bails on the whole thing.

I can’t help but feel like Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda is quite gross. I don’t want consolidation in gaming. Huge acquisitions like these are what lead to monopolization — I wouldn’t want a future where Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo own like 80% of gaming franchises. It made sense when they acquired smaller studios like Double Fine or Playground, those studios don’t need to worry as much about finances and can use Microsoft’s resources now.

I just hope acquiring a big publisher like Bethesda doesn’t become the norm.

I also worry about what the implications of Game Pass mean for the future — Netflix cancels shows all the time that are great due to low monthly active users/engagement numbers. I would hope that Game Pass doesn’t follow a similar route. There’s a lot of unknowns about this new path we’re going down this generation, so I have some reservations, despite Game Pass being great value on paper to many.

Not to mention Rare seems to be doing fine now. They had their low points on the 360, but Sea of Thieves is doing well and they seem to be passionate about it. For Lionhead, how much of that MS and how much was Molyneux? He left to start his own studio that had a Kickstarter for a game that largely failed to deliver, if I remember correctly.

@haz: Note that the Microsoft model doesn’t mirror the Netflix model exactly. Specifically, most Netflix Originals are contracted out to production houses who do the actual writing, filming, and editing. So for Netflix, it’s very easy to cancel a show because they just have to cancel a contract, or let it lapse. Microsoft, on the other hand, develops their first party stuff internally. 343i, Playground, Bethesda, and all the rest are technically Microsoft employees. To cancel a project would mean layoffs, which is a much more complicated situation, given that they likely have to pay out severance, sell off equipment and studio space, and just deal with a whole host of government red tape.

That’s not to say Microsoft won’t cancel a project, but the bar is much higher for them to justify it. More likely, a team working on a underperforming project will be switched over to something else, and given how game studios work (I.e racing studios generally make racing games, RPG studios generally make RPGs), fans of the old cancelled stuff may still enjoy the future output of the same studio.

@haz: In addition to what @navster15 rightly noted, that specific Netflix comparison doesn't really hold because when you talk about Netflix cancelling a show, you're talking about that happening between seasons which isn't as much of a concept for games. The closest comparison would be episodic games, which the industry as a whole is once again trending away from (RIP D4) and games-as-a-service style games which already have those metrics available (and already do get cancelled) regardless of Game Pass. A game might get cancelled mid-development but user engagement is only going to be a factor if it's a game that has an Early Access style rollout on Game Pass, like Grounded, which at least for now certainly doesn't seem like it's going to be the norm.

Games get phased on and off Game Pass regularly, but that just means you have to seek out the game elsewhere, it's still a finished product unlike a Netflix show that gets cancelled after season 2. In addition, MS has been good about letting people know pretty far in advance what's moving off Game Pass to give ample time to play it if you want to. And this pretty much only applies to 3rd party games, which again are generally widely available elsewhere.

Performance on Game Pass might, of course, influence the green lighting of sequels but personally I fail to see how that's really any different from the current state of how these decisions get made. If anything, it'll let people be more readily exposed to niche games that they may not ever have spent $60 to try previously and as others have already mentioned that appears to be what's happening with Game Pass so far at least.

I mean that's when they were bought, but that's not when they were ruined. Rare didn't release Sea Of Thieves until 2017. Viva Pinata and Banjo Kazzooi N&B were released in 2008 and then Rare spent the next 6 years making Kinect Sports games, bleeding talent, and slowly fading into obscurity. It's honestly a miracle that they turned it around with Sea Of Thieves (production started in 2015), especially when you compare to Lionhead, which published Fable: The Journey in 2012 and then nothing else.

I'd be extremely interested to know how much of that was MS pushing their kinect/avatar agenda to promote kinect hardware sales, and how much was at the discretion of the studios. Either way, it does seem like a waste of two extremely talented studios with strong pedigrees.

The real question is how long Phil holds any sort of power -- and how long Microsoft's Board of Directors let him do things like this? Microsoft may not be as capricious as Google, but the Mixer debacle shows that not everything is roses within the Personal Computing Division -- and Gaming itself is a small piece of the Microsoft puzzle. Microsoft, first and foremost, is a OS/Cloud Computing/Enterprise services company. They want a bigger piece of the Personal pie, they're looking for something to replace Windows OS revenue -- but if it turns out the bigwigs decide the real future is Azure cloud services and Office 365? Then all of this ends up in the dumpsters like XNA, GFW, Microsoft Game Studios, Zune, Windows Phones, and a bunch of other personal computing initiatives that didn't return bang for the buck.

Game Pass is a pretty amazing deal, but, given Microsoft's past history, it's definitely in the "don't commit to the ecosystem until they've proven they mean it this time" for me i.e. I'll probably get PC Game Pass, but I'm not going to buy anything through the Windows Store.

To be fair though, my own personal bias is that I tend to distrust subscription services in general -- because, no matter who it is, someday they turn the servers off. I have a few hundred dollars of Stardock Central/Impulse/GameStop App software that I'll never be able to run again.

@turtlefish: The Xbox division has been around since 2001. They just invested $7.5 billion in it and they have what looks like the Netflix of gaming in house, owned by them completely. Do you know how many tech companies wish they could have bought Netflix back when it was starting out? Instead Microsoft literally owns what looks like it might be the next one.

They might eventually abandon it but it won't be soon. Xbox is not Zune or Windows Phone. We know this because Xbox has outlived both of them by quite a bit.

Also Nadella is not Balmer. He's a smarter long term strategist.

I left wondering if I even care as as a gamer.

• The Elder Scrolls is dead to me: Skyrim was trash. As a huge fan of what could be done with the TES frame work, I was extremely frustrated as to how Skyrim truned out.
• Doom is cool, but I had no interest in playing it. I can super appreciate that Doom is really well made and is a perfect update to FPS shooter mechanixs. But, as a game for me it holda no power.
• Fallout is of course trash too, take everything poorly made in TES anc triple ist and break more. So yeah I'm not seeing how this is a loss if Sony doesn't get it. [whispers] Fallout doesn not sell well anymore [/whipsers]
• Wolfenstein, Dishonored, Brink, Rage, Evil WIthin? Again, good enough games, but not exataly earth shakers.

So, while it is great that Microsoft bought a sizable publisher, I still see no effect on games "I" play or like.

Bottomeline: I think MS had they money spend and this did make waves - it was good PR. However, I don't think this lineup of games that SELL really well. Heck, maybe that WAS the point! Bethesda games don't sell but they fills-out the list for Game Pass. Maybe, Microsoft doesn't even care if these games are buggy or sell poorly; this acquisition was for filler, games with some old reputation to burn.

The good that could come out of this? Well, I hopeTodd Howard, Emil Pagliarulo, Kurt Kuhlmann, and Bruce Nesmith all retire. Maybe, Microsoft could hand-pick a team from other MS studios to re-make Elder Scrolls from the ground up. That woudl be GREAT. The pemsis and world of TES is great, but it had as much 'solid structure' as a turd melting into Chesapeake Bay. Well, good luck Microsoft...give those Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 a raise and look at them for how 'good' game scoming out of your new acquisition can be if you get rid of Todd Howard.

@acharlie1377: also don't forget inXille entertainment. They could pretty much do a fallout reboot that will get us all happy.

Man oh man, Microsoft are doing wonders I'm afraid to fall in love with them again and get the Don Matrick treatment in the future 🤢

@acharlie1377: also don't forget inXille entertainment. They could pretty much do a fallout reboot that will get us all happy.

Man oh man, Microsoft are doing wonders. I'm afraid to fall in love with them again and get the Don Matrick treatment in the future 🤢

Interesting news as Microsoft now has Bethesda titles on Game Pass even with games like Starfield being exclusive on Xbox/PC for launching on it. What I find more interesting is Bethesda will take releasing titles on other platforms on a case by case basis. I think the only thing that would get me upset is them having exclusive DLC on Xbox for like a year or two before it coming to other consoles.

I just saw the news that Doom:Eternal was coming out on game pass Oct 1 but only for game pass on consoles.

Being a game pass on PC player it looks like microsoft will use game pass to push console sales by having games be available first on console game pass.

Outer Wilds isn't even on PC game pass last time I checked.

@m1k3ines: I doubt it’s a malicious thing on Microsoft’s part, rather just a quirk of PC storefronts versus just the Xbox store. Outer Wilds was kept from PC Game Pass because of Epic Store exclusivity, for instance. I imagine it’s something similar with Doom Eternal considering it’s not yet on the Windows Store.

The reverse can be true as well. Timespinner and The Messenger were PC Game Pass only for about a year before they came to Xbox.

I think the "case by case" line is just to make sure gamers don't go off the deep end, seeing as they're pretty frazzled by the news already.

I already have Morrowind, Obilvion, and Skyrim purchased so having earlier Bethesda games on GP doesn't matter too much to me, but getting Starfield, ES6, and everything afterwards on day one is no brainer if you're a fan of the developer.

All the speculation about having Bethesda games on PS5 becasue they'll make more money and have more eyes on their game doesn't make sense to me. If you want to play Bethesda games, all you have to do is buy an xbox. Any other hypothetical scenario is just port-begging imo.

@norm9: I think the consideration of whether Microsoft will port to PS5 has some basis in history. Minecraft is still published on PS4, and so is Minecraft Dungeons. Especially for the latter they could have kept it exclusive but chose not to. Same with stuff like The Outer Worlds, Ori on Switch, and We Happy Few. It’s not a guarantee that Bethesda games will appear elsewhere, but rather a reasonable possibility.

@navster15: But that's under the assumption Bethesda (as a MS property) and Microsoft themselves are more than happy to lend out THEIR new tent pole franchise, which I don't see, seeing as Halo, Forza, and Gears aren't on PS.

ETA- Minecraft is an aberration as it prints money.

Playstation only gamers are going to need to recognize that they won't be able to play certain games, same as Xbox gamers missed out on some games, for example FirePro wrestling and SFV.

So I don't find the possibility reasonable at all as a person with no horse in this race.

@norm9: I think you’re not realizing how much money Microsoft would be leaving on the table by keeping their franchises exclusive. Sony, when they screwed up with the PS3, still managed to have an install base of 80 million units. Even if the completely screw up the PS5 I doubt they’ll sink much lower than that due to entrenchment in many markets. That’s 80-ish million people who likely won’t buy an Xbox and probably don’t have a gaming PC. So why not sell them these games? Maybe they eventually realize that paying $70 a pop is silly and then jump onto Game Pass on Xcloud or another platform, but either way Microsoft is getting paid.

Of course, Microsoft could split the difference and do timed exclusivity, but I do think they’re going to eventually port most, if not all their games to PS5. And yes, that includes Halo, Forza, Gears, and other stalwarts. Will they likely sell less Xboxes than PS5s? Probably, but that’s going to happen anyway as there has never been a gen when Microsoft has sold more units (look up 360 vs PS3 lifetime sales if you don’t believe me). Forum fanboys can gloat, but Xbox will be getting paid either way.

I guess this is my point of contention. The hypothetical 80 million of PS5 buyers also includes people that buy maybe one game a year. They want to play the next Skyrim. Why would they buy a PS5 when they have to spend $70 a game with no guarantee that it'll have SKyrim down the line? Requires pretzel thinking for those to justify a PS purchase for a hypothetical release date of a game by a 'rival' company.

The simpler scenario is a big portion of these hypothetical 80 million PS5 buyers will see that the next Skyrim is coming to xbox, so they're going to do the obvious thing and cut out the middleman of buying a PS5 and just go straight to xbox and Gamepass.

More involved gamers will say that the PS5 also has TLOU2, GOW and other exclusives that make it worth purchasing. But none of that matters if all they want to play is the next Skyrim and they;ll purchase the one system to play their one game on.

@norm9: I think that’s a stretch assumption to say that there’s a significant amount of people that make The Elder Scrolls their one game a year. I don’t doubt they exist, but not enough to move the needle on console sales, and even if it did Microsoft really isn’t coming out ahead by selling their console at a loss and recouping that single game cost per year. I would contend that there are a ton of people who are just getting a PS5 sight unseen because they buy Playstations, especially in places like mainland Europe and Japan. Microsoft will make far more money selling their games directly to them rather than fighting a pointless war about who sold more boxes.

Also keep in mind that there are many many people who didn’t even hear the news about the Bethesda buyout, or if they did they didn’t make a connection to Elder Scrolls, Doom, or Fallout. Maybe they buy a PS5 assuming they’ll get those games on their platform. Maybe they trade in once they realize what happened, but I’ll bet most will shrug their shoulders and stay with what they have. Why not sell to those folks?

The division has been around since 2001, but they've cleaned house several times, and refocused what the gaming division was supposed to be. Microsoft is loathe to get rid of it because it's the one consumer play they've made that's actually had any sort of long term success -- and, even then, they've changed direction pretty hard at times. Xbox is not Zune or Windows Phone - but Games For Windows Live was supposed to be thing, and then XNA was supposed to be the thing, and well remember how successful Game Room was supposed to be, and Xbox One was going to be the center of our entertainment lives etc. And 7.5 billion is a lot of money in absolute terms, but it's chump change for Microsoft. Microsoft's market cap at the moment is 1.2 TRILLION, with a war chest around $100 billion dollars. They could write everything off tomorrow and, while it's not quite a rounding error, it would have zero material effect on their business outside of the gaming division.

You're right Nadella is not Balmer - but his career track (if memory serves me right) is the Enterprise side. He knows he needs some sort of Personal devices play, but he also knows where Microsoft's bread is buttered, and he won't hesitate to change if it looks like things are becoming a distraction, even if the financial outlay is manageable. And it's remember to note that Game Pass has the potential to be the "Netflix" of gaming, but it's not there yet. When Netflix started streaming, a lot of people were also playing in that space. There was no guarantee Netflix and it's specific model would be the one to come out on top.

Don't get me wrong - I really do hope this sticks, as a PC gamer, it's nice to get some love. And yeah, you would think that after all this, they'd at least give a full console generation for things to sort out before they do anything radical (if the term 'console generation' means anything after this set of consoles.)

But, on the other hand, if you told me a year ago that Microsoft was going to abandon their streaming play and tell everybody to go to Facebook Gaming, I would have said you were crazy.

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/630244920769314816/so-with-the-microsoft-thing-hows-the-chances-of

Josh Sawyer answering a jokey question earnestly answers that Microsft "seem pretty open to letting us work on what we want to work on and that appears to be the trend with other studios as well."