Micrsoft buys Zenimax Media

[Leonardo]

Reposted from the Nexus MA forum.

Reneer said:

I don't know how I feel about this development just yet, but Microsoft intends to purchase ZeniMax Media: https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-bethesda-zenimax-aquisition

I don't like it one bit and TBH I dunno what reaction I would have if this happen.

[BlackPete]

If M$ ends up doing that it would be sad. It would probably be as bad (or maybe almost as bad) as EA buying them out.

[DayDreamer]

Perhaps M$ will bring its vaunted commitment to bug free releases.

[Arthmoor]

There's an awful lot of doublespeak in the statements from both Todd Howard and Pete Hines about how "good" this will be for everyone and such. The bottom line is, Microsoft is not your friend. This isn't going to magically reverse all of the things people hated about where Zenimax was taking things since Microsoft loves microtransactions AND subscription gaming way too much for comfort. They also love those damned timed exclusives way too much as well.

You also don't sell of a wildly successful gaming company for straight cash unless you're in deep financial shit for some reason. Which makes you wonder just what it is the suits at Zenimax did to get themselves into so much trouble they had to sell.

They're more likely to bring "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish" to the table instead, as their history repeatedly shows them doing.

[DayDreamer]

On 9/21/2020 at 3:33 PM, Arthmoor said:

You also don't sell of a wildly successful gaming company for straight cash unless you're in deep financial shit for some reason.

My guess was that founder Robert Altman (of BCCI fame) wants to retire; reportedly he's been talking about it for some time. Or their Arab oil money funders are backing out. Or their private equity partners want to cash out. It probably has nothing to do with current profitability or cash flow.

[lmstearn]

Microsoft might be a friend to those who wish to subscribe to Game Pass, but not so much to those who wish to play Beth games with extenders and replacers. See this announcement. For those who wish to play the older Beth games, it's definitely better and cheaper to be using the native PC versions.

For other games, who knows? A few might work well,- for the others, a quick trawl got these:

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/370421/cant-install-or-uninstall-the-surge-2-in-xbox-game-pass

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/369791/error-0x800704c6-on-updating-reinstalling-gears-tactics-win10-xbox-game-pass

https://superuser.com/questions/1627718/game-not-detecting-keyboard

https://superuser.com/questions/952739/windows-10-xbox-games-let-this-app-access-your-info

[DayDreamer]

On 10/1/2020 at 8:41 AM, DayDreamer said:

My guess was that founder Robert Altman (of BCCI fame) wants to retire

As it turns out, he was dying (February 3, 2021).

31 minutes ago, lmstearn said:

but not so much to those who wish to play Beth games with extenders and replacers

I'm more concerned that future games won't be readily fixable. Contrary to so many posters, I'm not at all convinced that BGS or M$ are concerned about modding. They make so much money in the first few weeks that the rest is just gravy.

The reason that M$ is better these days at Windows security updates is various government entities sued them. I'm not expecting governments to be concerned about fixing games. Indeed, I was unable to get the FTC interested, even when a friend was CTO there and various game platforms were C&C for Internet attacks. There are too few resources and too many problems. Instead, we need a law that allows consumers to sue collectively, regardless of contracts of adhesion.