IS Microsoft to announce the successful conclusion of the negotiations: Bethesdaand the whole group ZeniMax Mediawas officially acquired by the Redmond giant, and this brings the entire team of studios and the numerous IPs under the banner of the world Xbox.
Phil Spencer, boss of Xbox, wanted to personally welcome Bethesda through a post on Xbox Wire, in which he welcomes the eight new development studios joining Xbox Game Studios:
This is an exciting day for Xbox. Today we officially complete the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks. It is an honor to welcome eight incredibly talented development studios – Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog and Roundhouse Studios – and their passionate global communities in the Xbox family. Now that everything is official, we can start working together to bring more great games to everyone.
The Xbox boss also offers some new details about a topic of great discussion in recent months: Bethesda will continue to do cross-platform games? Without giving names and precise indications, Spencer confirms that Microsoft’s intention is to make Xbox, PC and Game Pass the best way to enjoy Bethesda productions, even if the games will also arrive on other platforms – we can assume Sony and Nintendo consoles.
It doesn’t end there though, because alongside cross-platform titles there will also be exclusive titles for Xbox and PCwhich therefore cannot be used on other systems:
This is the next step in building an industry-leading first-party study team – a commitment we have to our Xbox community. With the addition of Bethesda’s creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox, PC and Game Pass consoles will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC gamers.
With the official announcement from Microsoft, we can therefore put an end to what it undoubtedly is one of the largest acquisitions in entertainment history, and the most important in the Xbox world. It is a deal worth 7.5 billion dollars, which allows the American company to get hold of historical IP and video game series such as Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein, DOOM, Dishonored and many more.
Curiously, the next Bethesda productions will be, at least initially, exclusive to PlayStation 5: Deathloop, the Arkane Lyon game expected in May, will in fact be a Sony temporal exclusive, this due to a commercial agreement with Bethesda before negotiations with Microsoft for the acquisition. Same goes for GhostWire Tokyo.
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