Microsoft have announced they bought Zenimax Media – parent company of Bethesda, Arkane, Machine Games, id, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog – and thus is now one of the largest developers and publishers in the world. Thanks to this deal many massive properties are under the Microsoft brand including The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Prey, and Wolfenstein, amongst others.
A price tag of $7.5 billion (yes, with a B) was confirmed by Bethesda. To put that into a little context, Microsoft bought multi-platform mega-sandbox developers Mojang back in 2014 for £2.5 billion. This also puts Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo, two PlayStation 5 exclusives which have been large parts of Sony marketing, in a position to be published by Microsoft on a competitors platform. How Sony, a company often resistant to deals with competitors, will react to this remains to be seen.
On the bright side for us PC gamers – this acquisition may put the often derided publisher under better management and will certainly be a large boon to subscribers of the already excellent value Game Pass. We’ll update this story if there are any new developments.
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