Microsoft buys Bethesda

All though rumors about MS buying Bungie were close, just got the wrong last part of the name! lol. Seriously huge news though.

https://news.microsoft.com/2020/09/21/microsoft-to-acquire-zenimax-media-and-its-game-publisher-bethesda-softworks/

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All this means for me is that I get even more amazing games, essentially for free, for my subscription. Keep up the good work.

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All though rumors about MS buying Bungie were close, just got the wrong last part of the name! lol. Seriously huge news though.

There are two possibilities here:

1. The console wars are back on
2. It will be a Rare situation in which their new games are bad.

Given what happened to FASA, Digital Anvil, Ensemble, Rare, and Lionhead, I'm going to guess number 2. Expect their output to decline, and all the creative people to leave and start a new studio.

By the way 7.5 BILLION?! WTF?! Fun fact, MS only paid about 30 Million for Bungie!

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All though rumors about MS buying Bungie were close, just got the wrong last part of the name! lol. Seriously huge news though.

There are two possibilities here:

1. The console wars are back on
2. It will be a Rare situation in which their new games are bad.

Given what happened to FASA, Digital Anvil, Ensemble, Rare, and Lionhead, I'm going to guess number 2. Expect their output to decline, and all the creative people to leave and start a new studio.

The console wars are no longer fought based on the consoles. At least this generation has set that. It's going to be based on more than that and I think Microsoft figured that out before Sony.

We will find out in the next 12-18 months. But honestly, for as big a company as Bethesda, I doubt this will happen to the extent that you are mentioning. I feel like bigger companies aren't affected by this near as much as smaller companies. Also, all these companies are already producing games in a decline due to covid. But again, we will find out in the future.

By the way 7.5 BILLION?! WTF?! Fun fact, MS only paid about 30 Million for Bungie!

This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

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This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

What are the IPs? I don't actually know?

Doom, Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls… what else?

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This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

What are the IPs? I don't actually know?

Doom, Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls… what else?

Dishonored
Fallout
Prey
The Evil Within

Upcoming:
Deathloop
Ghostwire
Starfield

They're getting 8 studios (2,300 people) with this acquisition.

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This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

What are the IPs? I don't actually know?

Doom, Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls… what else?

Dishonored

Did I just… miss my chance to play this guilt free? :-p

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This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

What are the IPs? I don't actually know?

Doom, Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls… what else?

Dishonored

Did I just… miss my chance to play this guilt free? :-p

I mean you can go pick up a physical copy at your local Gamestop or order it on Amazon or Ebay...

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This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

What are the IPs? I don't actually know?

Doom, Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls… what else?

Dishonored

Did I just… miss my chance to play this guilt free? :-p

I mean you can go pick up a physical copy at your local Gamestop or order it on Amazon or Ebay...

I have one for PS4, but it plays like ass. 30 FPS and garbage stick control. I was going to do it on PC.

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Here you go! :)

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This isn't at all surprising to me. No one really knew about Bungie before Halo, and Microsoft bought them for Halo. Bethesda has a huge amount of very well known IPs under their belt.

What are the IPs? I don't actually know?

Doom, Wolfenstein, Elder Scrolls… what else?

Dishonored

Did I just… miss my chance to play this guilt free? :-p

I'm surprised you're able to play any game guilt free.

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Bethesda’s games have been getting worse since Oblivion, without any help from MS.

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All though rumors about MS buying Bungie were close, just got the wrong last part of the name! lol. Seriously huge news though.

There are two possibilities here:

1. The console wars are back on
2. It will be a Rare situation in which their new games are bad.

Given what happened to FASA, Digital Anvil, Ensemble, Rare, and Lionhead, I'm going to guess number 2. Expect their output to decline, and all the creative people to leave and start a new studio.

By the way 7.5 BILLION?! WTF?! Fun fact, MS only paid about 30 Million for Bungie!

They paid 375 million for Rare. Prices started going up fast.

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@Obsidian so Fallout New Vegas 2 is a legit possibility now right!?!?
— Michael Hamilton (@TheKeystoner) September 21, 2020

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/MqyiuNsWS2
— Obsidian (@Obsidian) September 21, 2020

It's been interesting to see how many comments around the net are about this idea.

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You know this of course means there is the possibility that existing Bethesda games could be removed from the PSN store. If you bought it, and don't have it installed, you just got screwed.

Will it happen? I don't know, but the fact that it COULD should have you worried.

But they can never come to your house and take your disc.

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You know this of course means there is the possibility that existing Bethesda games could be removed from the PSN store. If you bought it, and don't have it installed, you just got screwed.

Will it happen? I don't know, but the fact that it COULD should have you worried.

But they can never come to your house and take your disc.

Do you have a single example of this ever being done (due to a game dev company being bought by another company, already-purchased but not-yet-downloaded software becomes unavailable to the purchaser, with no financial recourse)?

The moon could be hit by a magic beam that breaks off a big piece and wipes out life on earth, too... but I'm not losing any sleep over it.

(When did you become Chicken Little?)

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While not necessarily through acquisitions, there are several examples of games being removed from digital stores. Flappy Bird, Alan Wake, Too Human, and others I’m sure that I don’t know off the top of my head.

By the way I’m lucky enough to not have deleted or updated PT.

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Flappy Bird

Wasn't this because the creator of the game removed it?

Alan Wake

This was for expired music licenses and it is available now.

TOo Human

This was because they were court-ordered to do this after not paying fees for Unreal Engine.

You didn't at all answer Claude's question.

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You didn't at all answer Claude's question.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of pointing this out.

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You didn't at all answer Claude's question.

Almost every game from telltale.

They were acquired cheaply by another company (LCG Entertainment), and no longer offer direct support, downloads, or activations for old games. I literally cannot play several of their games that I already own, because the server check is gone and the new company won't support it or give offline activation codes. This was explained to me directly in an email from support.

Ironically, had I bought from Steam instead of direct from the company, I could still be playing them since those versions don't do the same activation. So funnily enough Steam is like the "physical" version in this case… for now.

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You didn't at all answer Claude's question.

Almost every game from telltale.

They were acquired cheaply by another company (LCG Entertainment), and no longer offer direct support, downloads, or activations for old games. I literally cannot play several of their games that I already own, because the server check is gone and the new company won't support it or give offline activation codes. This was explained to me directly in an email from support.

Ironically, had I bought from Steam instead of direct from the company, I could still be playing them since those versions don't do the same activation. So funnily enough Steam is like the "physical" version in this case… for now.

Hmm. My initial reading of your post was different; I hadn't thought about the Telltale story. (To be fair, my feeling about that story is that those games are playable... once. I bought all of the Walking Dead seasons, and would have been annoyed if between the time I paid for them and the time I played them they'd become inaccessible. Oddly enough, I just checked, and they're letting me install the Xbox 360 versions I have right now on my Xbox One (I haven't done it, so I suppose it's possible that after I install, they'll tell me I can't play, but it LOOKS like they're still available).)

I guess if MS did that (especially for games that were relatively new), I'd be pissed. I'd also be pretty shocked. Slightly different situation, I'd say, though - Bethesda -> MS is on a totally different scale than Telltale -> LCG.

::shrug::

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Too Human is actually available now, totally free. It was even made backward compatible.

https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-us/Product/Too-Human/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d5307de?nosplash=1

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Thanks. Always was enamored by the demo, but by the time I had enough income to buy it, it was gone.

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Even if a game is removed from the store (Xbox at least, I don't know about others. I haven't been in the PS/Steam/Nintendo ecosystems long enough to see any of my games removed) you can still download them. The license is still attached to your account.

For example, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was removed from the Marketplace years ago, but I can go download it right now if I want.

Of course this only applies as long as the Xbox store is around... but it's a safe bet that that will be quite a while.

Meanwhile, thanks to disc-rot, your disc based games will only be playable for a maximum of ~40 years... lol.

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Meanwhile, thanks to disc-rot, your disc based games will only be playable for a maximum of ~40 years... lol.

The rest of your post is useful info, thank you! But this isn't really true but for burned discs. Discs with pits pressed in them are expected to last upwards of 300 years. Burned discs will degrade due to fading dyes, but as long as a pressed disc is taken care of, the physical pits won't really degrade. Disc rot is usually the result of improper care.

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Phil Spencer, Todd Howard, Pete Hines and Major Nelson discuss the recent news of Bethesda joining Xbox and tell a few stories of working together.

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Xbox will let you pre-install games, even if you haven’t preordered. So even if you want a physical disc, you can predownload the game, then go pick up the disc when the game comes out. When you get home, you just pop in the disc and play without having to wait on an install.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/23/21452704/xbox-series-x-smart-delivery-download-before-buying-install-pre-order

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Xbox will let you pre-install games, even if you haven’t preordered. So even if you want a physical disc, you can predownload the game, then go pick up the disc when the game comes out. When you get home, you just pop in the disc and play without having to wait on an install.

https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/23/21452704/xbox-series-x-smart-delivery-download-before-buying-install-pre-order

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Nah, didn’t you hear? Game Pass exists, it’s the death of the disc! (:

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Microsoft buys Bethesda (Gaming)

Go get 'em Microsoft

Throw'n down stacks!