Bethesda Softworks - Officially with Team Xbox

[Silver]

The Bethesda acquisition has been approved. It is now confirmed that some games will be exclusive to PC and XBOX.

Officially Welcoming Bethesda to Team Xbox

by Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox * Mar 9, 2021 @ 6:30am

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Publisher of iconic gaming franchises will expand Xbox's diverse portfolio on Xbox Game Pass

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.

Thank you to all our players for joining us on this incredible journey and to the millions of Bethesda fans around the world. Now that we're one team, we can start working together on the future ahead. We will have more to share about what's next for our teams later this year. In the meantime, to properly celebrate this special moment, we are bringing additional Bethesda games into Xbox Game Pass later this week. Stay tuned for more details!

More information.

 

[Zloth]

I was surprised to see so much Dishonored and Prey in there. Dishonored is done. Prey still has legs but has been pushed out in favor of a new style of gaming.

P.S. Dedication to excellence? Ummm... well, dedication to modders that then produce excellence, but whatever gets the job done.

 

[Couchpotato]

Not really surprised. Wonder what games wild be limited timed exclusives and what games will be full exclusives? Now If I was a Sony Fanboy I'd be pissed at this news.

 

[duerer]

Everything goes according to plan, Lord Vader.

On a serious note: this is really an expected move, as the legal obstacles of the MS-ZeniMax buy have been resolved. Also an expected move in the light of MS' master plan, that is Game Pass, which is, NOT Xbox per se, rather a platform-independent gaming service (hello Netflix). XBox is merely a "recommended" hardware to use the service (memories of the old MSX platform pops to mind).

Rumors that Nintendo is in negotiations with MS to allow Game Pass run on their console via Azure cloud gaming. If this happens, truly a next generation of gaming will emerge - at least business-wise.

 

[Morrandir]

As money was never Bethesda's problem I don't see the benefit of this acquisition for us gamers.

 

[JDR13]

I was surprised to see so much Dishonored and Prey in there. Dishonored is done. Prey still has legs but has been pushed out in favor of a new style of gaming.

Did they actually say Dishonored is done? I hope not. There's a lot of untapped potential in that setting.

On a side note: It seems somewhat disingenuous for Bethesda to feature games from Arkane and id Software in the video and not mention them at any point.

 

[rune_74]

I think the big benefit from this that no one is talking about is that this means all of their games day one will be on gamepass. Some are going to say, so what I don't sign up for that, a report a couple months back is that there are 18m subscribers and I'm going to bet even more now. What this allows is for games to be released on there that can succeed, like dishonored 2, where sales figures on units won't matter as much as quality. I think we may see a lot more chances taken with what they work on.

 

[rune_74]

Did they actually say Dishonored is done? I hope not. There's a lot of untapped potential in that setting.

On a side note: It seems somewhat disingenuous for Bethesda to feature games from Arkane and id Software in the video and not mention them at any point.

I just started playing dishonored 2 this morning...I have put off for so long....I saw it on gamepass on my series X and I have to say the start of it is excellant.

I have heard that Arkane has something in the oven, just not sure what it is.

A little off topic, but I just completed Titanfall 2 campaign, what a wild ride that was....so good.

 

[Carnifex]

Heh, an exclusive announcement that doesn't perturb this person, as I find most of their recent offerings not well suited to me. Oh how the wheel has turned on this once and storied company, but I live in hope that, perhaps in the future, they will once again have some worthwhile products to delight us all with.

 

[Lemonhead]

So they didn't show anything new? Just that they will release stuff on xbox/px? What a snooze-fest. There were rumours on Reddit that Beth would show something new from Starfield. I guess that was dead wrong.

 

[Terry]

I like the part where "Bethesda continues making games the way it always has" does that mean more bug riddled games for moders to fix? How will mod even work on live?

Ah hell a grumpy old gamer shuffes back to his cave.

 

[JDR13]

A little off topic, but I just completed Titanfall 2 campaign, what a wild ride that was….so good.

Really? That one didn't grab me at all. I thought both the gameplay and story were pretty generic. I quit a few hours in.

 

[mercy]

As money was never Bethesda's problem I don't see the benefit of this acquisition for us gamers.

Bethesda's games were too brainy. They needed to be stupidified down to the level of Don'tThinkJustSmash Consoles.

I can't shake the feeling this means The Beginning of The End for Bethesda.

 

[Zloth]

I have heard that Arkane has something in the oven, just not sure what it is.

Deathloop - interesting idea but I don't think it's going to be an immersive sim.

Did they actually say Dishonored is done? I hope not. There's a lot of untapped potential in that setting.

I don't know if they said it but the Death of the Outsider DLC sure felt like the end of the whole series to me. Plus I'm pretty sure they are heading out of the immersive sim business - unless Microsoft says to go back in?

On a side note: It seems somewhat disingenuous for Bethesda to feature games from Arkane and id Software in the video and not mention them at any point.

They probably don't want to do that - the idea is to make it feel like one company. (Just before they get eaten by an even bigger company, which will want to do the same thing.)

 

[JDR13]

I don't know if they said it but the Death of the Outsider DLC sure felt like the end of the whole series to me. Plus I'm pretty sure they are heading out of the immersive sim business - unless Microsoft says to go back in?

The end of that story arc, and probably the last we'll see of Corvo and Emily, but they dropped tidbits of lore thoughout the games that mention other locations. The one that sounded interesting was a large continent to the east called Pandyssia.

I suspect you may be right though about them being done with immersive sims for now. Considering Prey apparently didn't sell well enough to warrant a sequel, I guess we shouldn't expect anything similar in the near future.

 

[Carnifex]

I didn't realize that the Xbox had an official team? Do they also take the field as footballers, or tennis pros? That would be quite the competition, I can only imagine the walls of fat rolling out from behind their collective consoles to participate in actual athletic endeavours, talk about must view sports!

 

[rune_74]

So they didn't show anything new? Just that they will release stuff on xbox/px? What a snooze-fest. There were rumours on Reddit that Beth would show something new from Starfield. I guess that was dead wrong.

I heard there could be one later this month around the 23rd...they did say there would be no game announcements at the last one, I get the feeling they are rolling out a marketing program to keep a little info coming out at at time to keep momentum going.

 

[Imo.]

My main concern would be mod support. A Bethesda game without proper mod support sounds frightful.

 

[JDR13]

My main concern would be mod support. A Bethesda game without proper mod support sounds frightful.

I doubt we need to worry about that. I don't see Bethesda jumping off the mod wagon considering how how much it's added to the popularity of their games.

 

[rune_74]

My main concern would be mod support. A Bethesda game without proper mod support sounds frightful.

Why would that change?

It didn't throughout their time on xbox....you can mode skyrim and fallout 4 no issue.