Xbox Buys Bethesda

Xbox has announced that it has acquired ZeniMax Media, and with it Bethesda Softworks, creators and publishers of The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, Doom, Dishonored, Quake, Starfield and more. Announced by Head of Xbox Phil Spencer in an Xbox Wire post today, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion – 3 times the $2.5 billion it paid for Mojang and Minecraft in 2014. The deal includes ZeniMax media as a whole, Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios. In a blog post, Bethesda SVP of global marketing said, "We’re still working on the same games we were yesterday, made by the same studios we’ve worked with for years, and those games will be published by us." The move, Hines explains, is because Microsoft "access to resources that will make us a better publisher and developer." It's perhaps not a coincidence that the announcement comes the day before Xbox Series X and S preorders open. Xbox says it "will be adding Bethesda’s iconic franchises to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC." Developing...