It is done! Now it gets interesting.
Last year, Xbox announced that the company had acquired ZeniMax, Bethesda’s parent company, for a huge sum of $7.5 billion. However, that announcement was premature as there were a lot of I’s that needed to be dotted, T’s that needed to be crossed, and a whole lot of regulations that needed to be adhered to before this could officially take place. Today that is all completed, and ZeniMax and Xbox have officially announced the completion of the deal.
— Bethesda (@bethesda) March 9, 2021
The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, released a statement on the merger finally being finalized and took a moment to address Robert A. Altman, founder of ZeniMax, who had passed away in February 2021.
This is an exciting day for Xbox. Today we officially complete the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks. It’s an honor to welcome the 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 to the Xbox family. Now that everything is official, we can begin working together to deliver more great games to everyone. At every step building toward this moment, I’ve been inspired and motivated by the creativity, insight, and community-first approach of the talented people at Bethesda. Our goal is to give these teams the best foundation for doing their greatest work and to learn from them as we continue to build Xbox into an inclusive platform for all players.
This is the next step in building an industry-leading first party studios team, a commitment we have to our Xbox community. With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass 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 players.
As we shared previously, it’s vitally important that Bethesda continues making games the way it always has. We look forward to empowering Bethesda’s creative teams to reach even more players around the world, helping make future Bethesda titles the biggest and most popular games in their history. Xbox and Bethesda have long shared a common vision for the future of gaming. Both as fans and as creators, Bethesda understands the potential of Xbox Game Pass.
We would also like to honor the life and memory of my close friend Robert A. Altman, founder of ZeniMax Media. Robert believed deeply in the power of gaming and we are privileged to be able to continue his work by joining forces with the teams he built and led for many years. I will miss the opportunity to work directly with him on the future of our combined teams but I know that his spirit will live on in the shared work we do and motivate us to make this partnership all he envisioned.
This is where things start to get interesting. As you can imagine, Xbox purchased ZeniMax and its parent company to bolster the Xbox / Windows Gaming library and studios. It’s important to note that Phil Spencer also spelled out somethings in his statement. There will be NEW games that are going to be exclusive to Xbox and the PC. And there will be other games that won’t be exclusive and will end up on other platforms. As to what games, I’m sure Xbox has an idea but doesn’t want to ruin the surprise or ruffle any feathers quite yet. If I had to guess, I’d imagine that the exclusive games would be Bethesda’s largest games, including Elderscrolls and the in-development Starfield.
Either way, I’ll be watching, and I’m sure you will be as well.
Source: Xbox News Wire
