I find it hard to stay angry at Bethesda since they brought modding to Fallout 4 on the Xbox...back before I came back to PC.
In a more interesting tidbit down the bottom of the article I linked...Microsoft say plainly that they aren't finished aquiring new game studios...they're actively looking to gain some prominent Asian studios, traditionally the sole realm of Sony of course
With the kind of financial clout to offer Bethesda $7.5 billion without batting an eyelid...dare we hope for Ghost of Tsushima in the Microsoft Gamestore store any time soon?
if this is the start of the snowball turned avalanche that will take out Epic Games and its slimy CEO, then I'm all IN.
Still recovering from this 9.8 quake at ground zero. Were there talks of this in the game news? I can't recall any to date. This has immense positive (as you pointed out) as well as negative implications for flagship franchises in the future.
1. The potential good in M$ quest for global market domination over Sony:
M$ wears a white hat and doesn't bully Bethesda into how they should design future flagship games aka The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. They back off and stay in their swim lane as publisher. And give the software dev studios they acquire to develop the game.
That this conversation genuinely happens:
Obsidian: "We'd like to work on another Fallout game since The Outer Worlds and New Vegas were a TKO---"
Microsoft: "Say no more."
2. The paranoid and bad: For starters, will M$ be like the Exceptional DonkeysRearEndHats and go 100% Borg? TES VI and Starfield are all at stake. Despite current fan base burnout and disillusionment with Fallout (thanks to the Titantic that is F76), FO5 is also at stake. Is Bethesda doing this assimilation to lean towards designing console centric games (with PC platform games becoming a pure afterthought, crappy PC port) in the future? Given the console limitations where CPU power, RAM and HD space is concerned, is Skyrim the end of Bethesda's amazing open world sand box games? Especially being mod friendly since M$ is likely to have restrctions on what content (adult/sex rated, copyright/brand related etc) can be allowed on xbx? And particularly since despite being next gen, the new XBX will lag contemporary medium end PCs at release? So basically, will M$ influence Bethesda to "dumb down" game play in TES and Fallout?
Worst nightmare: is this the beginning of another cancerous publisher whose only reason for existence is to destroy and cannibalize all the indie and AAA game studios it assimilates? Since Bethesda decided to join the EA/Activision AAA franchise destruction of their devs a decade late, will M$ whip Bethesda down that dark road to microtransaction hell? Or since it seems Bethesda was nearing that precipice, given how they screwed over the fan base with F76, FO4 & Blades pushing toxic microtransactions. So is M$ going to pull an EA and chuck Bethesda off the cliff? Or just twist their arm into pushing out increasingly worthless, devoid of content, and barely functional MVPs riddled with cancerous micro transactions?
Basically, is this the begining of the end of Bethesda the way EA destroyed Bioware, Mythic, Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood Studios, Origin etc. etc?
This rant bring to mind that-other-software-dev-who-will-not-be-mentioned-here. Technically, M$ could make a significantly lower offer (order of magnitude at $1Billion). Odds are, the CEO of said company would likely jump at this offer. Then M$ could repeat history by pulling Freelancer Part Deux. Basically allowing said CEO to gracefully and quietly retire, take over his existing pre-alpha tech demo, and potentially repeat the success it had with saving Freelancer three decades ago.
www.polygon.com
