BREAKING NEWS MICROSOFT BUYS ZENIMAX MEDIA FOR 7.5 BILLION

[MFG38]

I'm, uh... not entirely sure how to feel about this.

 

Guess I'll wait and see.

[RjY]

7 minutes ago, Catpho said:

Nathan Lineback will not be pleased.

Nor will Czerwonka & Keränen

[DuckReconMajor]

I questioned what day it was as the title had an almost April Fools ring to it.

 

All I can say is at least they got to it before Facebook did.

 

 

[Loud Silence]

Classic Doom games will be bundled with Windows like Solitaire lol.

[snapshot]

Just now, DuckReconMajor said:

I questioned what day it was as the title had an almost April Fools ring to it.

I was gonna say the same thing, this came out of nowhere, no leaks or anything

 

$7.5 Billion, 3 times as much as Mojang

[Mr. Freeze]

Wow, this changes...something or other?

[Gez]

4 minutes ago, sluggard said:

$7.5 Billion, 3 times as much as Mojang

Said like this, it sounds small.

 

Sure Minecraft is huge, but that's about it for Mojang. ZeniMax has a lot of studios (Bethesda and id, of course, but also Arkane, MachineGames, Tango, Roundhouse...).

[unerxai]

So I guess it'll finally happen... green suit guy is gonna meet green suit guy

[Gunstar Green]

This could be a good thing for Bethesda, they were kind of floundering and I was starting to think they were going to die before the next Elder Scrolls.

 

As for id, who knows. I felt like they took their new Doom as far as it can go with Eternal so it was already questionable what their next move was going to be.

 

As long as they don't start doing something crazy like pulling the old games off of store fronts or making things Windows Store exclusive all I can do with this news is shrug. It is kind of funny after all these years of pining for it, Microsoft finally owns Doom.

[Biodegradable]

Considering how inevitable it is for these mega-corps to constantly buy each other out, I 'spose Microsoft is a better trade-off than fucking EA, who we know enjoy acquiring studios, forcing them to make games they're not experienced with on a ridiculously short deadline and then kill them when they predictably are unable to produce a decent game. Last time I checked, Microsoft doesn't have a consistent history of killing game development studios like that.

[HQDefault]

"This corporate acquisition shit makes my brain hurt"

[MattFright]

36 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Personally, I am fed up with the prospect with everything owned by a handful of giant, mega-corporations, so this new acquisition just rubs me the wrong way in general.

 

Microsoft could buy one, two, five, ten, twenty or fifty big game dev companies and they'd still not come anywhere close to establishing a monopoly on the games industry. This industry is the furthest we have from a monopoly nowadays, and i don't think that will change.

[Biodegradable]

Just now, MattFright said:

 

Microsoft could buy one, two, five, ten, twenty or fifty big game dev companies and they'd still not come anywhere close to establishing a monopoly on the games industry. This industry is the furthest we have from a monopoly nowadays, and i don't think that will change.

 

They've already got the OS monopoly, dude. Give 'em time.

[MattFright]

Just now, Biodegradable said:

 

They've already got the OS monopoly, dude. Give 'em time.

 

MacOS is still pretty popular (for some reason), and Linux's userbase is growing faster than ever before, and they completely lost it when it came to trying to compete on the mobile OS market. I feel like you're being a bit pessimistic.

[Maes]

1 hour ago, cybdmn said:

I guess we have to wait and see what will happen to id Software and their franchises.

 

BWAHAHAHA NOW YOU WILL NEVER GET RID OF THE EVERLASTING WINTEL MISERY IF YOU WANT TO KEEP PLAYING DOOM

[Sir Hattington]

1 minute ago, Biodegradable said:

 

They've already got the OS monopoly, dude. Give 'em time.

Microsoft is slowly losing their market share to GNU/Linux.

[Biodegradable]

3 minutes ago, MattFright said:

I feel like you're being a bit pessimistic.

 

Guilty as charged, I don't trust good things to come out of a handful of mega-corporations owning every form of entertainment IP. Microsoft buying ZeniMax makes me feel as uneasy as I did when Disney bought out 20th Century Fox.

 

3 minutes ago, Sir Hattington said:

Microsoft is slowly losing their market share to GNU/Linux.

 

Linux: "It's not just for programming nerds anymore!"

 

Jokes aside, I have been seeing it come into prevalence more and more lately. Mind you, I don't really pay attention to this kind of stuff that much, so I'll take your word for it, mate.

[Maes]

6 minutes ago, Sir Hattington said:

Microsoft is slowly losing their market share to GNU/Linux.

 

Been hearing that for the last 20 years, but there's an upper cap it will never go beyond.

 

GNU/Linux never quite got a foothold the "newb/granny/lamer" user market, and any new prebuilt IBM PC-compatible computer you set to buy today, desktop or laptop, will still come with Windows preinstalled in 99.999% of cases, unless go out of your way to ensure otherwise.

 

Besides, "OS market" is not necessarily exclusive: there are dual boot machines as well but even if you take those into account, there's still a maximum cap for GNU/Linux as a desktop OS, as it's aimed mostly at sysadmins/power users/etc., not casual users who just want to "Uh...surf the 'Net, play some games, watch some youtube videos, and execute dangerous e-mail attachments".

Edited September 21, 2020 by Maes

[Buckshot]

5 minutes ago, Sir Hattington said:

Microsoft is slowly losing their market share to GNU/Linux.

 

Considering all of Azure back end runs on Linux, And the fact Microsoft has long changed its tune to Linux even implementing shells and native integration into Windows as of recent is almost a certain guarantee of this.

[scalliano]

This must be how NFL2K fans felt back in 2005...

[Sir Hattington]

4 minutes ago, Maes said:

GNU/Linux never quite got a foothold the "newb/granny/lamer" user market

 

4 minutes ago, Maes said:

and any new prebuilt IBM PC-compatible computer you set to buy today, desktop or laptop, will still come with Windows preinstalled in 99.999% of cases

Yeah, and then when it does get put on prebuilts and put with newbies things like this happens

 

[MattFright]

2 minutes ago, Maes said:

it's aimed mostly at sysadmins/power users/etc., not casual users.

 

More and more casual users are abandoning computers in favor of phones or tablets, so i fail to see how that really affects Linux negatively. He also *did* say "slowly", he's not wrong. More and more big companies are investing into Linux, it's getting more press online, and as awful services like Google Stadia are for the end user, they result in more money being pumped into making Linux more compatible for general gaming, software and hardware. You can't say it won't get anywhere just because it hasn't already.

 

6 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

I don't trust good things to come out of a handful of mega-corporations owning every form of entertainment IP. Microsoft buying ZeniMax makes me feel as uneasy as I did when Disney bought out 20th Century Fox.

 

I 100% get that, but you have to notice the many differences and nuances between the movies industry and the games industry. Just like in the books industry, one person can publish something and it can find just as much success as high budgeted releases. You can tell that indie devs make a lot of money, and sometimes much more than many publishers that invest millions into their bloated mainstream cashgrabs. I honestly can't see games published by Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and others, then look at games like The Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, ULTRAKILL, Undertale, Terraria, etc and imagine that they would ever run out of meaningful competition.

[Biodegradable]

2 minutes ago, MattFright said:

You can tell that indie devs make a lot of money, and sometimes much more than many publishers that invest millions into their bloated mainstream cashgrabs. I honestly can't see games published by Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, EA and others, then look at games like The Binding of Isaac, Dead Cells, ULTRAKILL, Undertale, Terraria, etc and imagine that they would ever run out of meaningful competition.

 

Absolutely, man. I've said it countless times at this point: Thank fuck for the indie game scene.

[P41R47]

Good lord!
Nathan Lineback surely had a heart attack after knowing this news.

He was so damn right, damn right.
http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html

 

[Scorpius]

Not sure how I feel about this, though I do wish only the best for everyone working at Zenimax and Bethesda. :)

[Ichor]

[Gunstar Green]

Clippy would be a perfect addition to Doom seeing as in he's been banished to hell.

[Antkibo]

42 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

They've already got the OS monopoly, dude. Give 'em time.

They got the desktop OS monopoly. Most servers are either Linux or BSD.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Antkibo

[Bauul]

My hunch is Microsoft did this for the Game Pass content. They won't particularly mess with too many of the games (they seem to be giving their studios quite a lot of creative freedom), but the message will be:

 

"Why spend $70 each on the new Doom/Elder Scrolls/Fallout etc. when you can get them all for just $5.99 a month?"

 

I doubt they'll even make them exclusive to Xbox. It's almost better to have them available on PS at full price to make Game Pass (which is where they're putting all their eggs) look better value.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Bauul

[Blastfrog]

I was disgusted enough when id decided to sell themselves to a larger company rather than just accept their original fate and fold, and now this shit. Imagine a world where all of id's properties became public domain. I realize this obviously isn't how companies in the business of making money would operate, but I can dream, can't I?

 

But no seriously, now Microsoft owns all of this stuff. This world is fucking garbage. Enough with the mergers and buyouts, can't anything be competitive and independent anymore?