Well going by the immediate reaction to this tweet from the gaming industry including myself, no one saw this coming!
A statement from Phil Spencer followed this tweet on Xbox Wire, the official News Site for all things Xbox:
Today is a special day, as we welcome some of the most accomplished studios in the games industry to Xbox. We are thrilled to announce Microsoft has entered into an agreement to acquire ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks.
As one of the largest, most critically acclaimed, privately held game developers and publishers in the world, Bethesda is an incredibly talented group of 2,300 people worldwide who make up some of the most accomplished creative studios in our industry across Bethesda Softworks, Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios. These are the teams responsible for franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, DOOM, Dishonored, Prey, Quake, Starfield and many more.
Just as they took the bold first steps to bring The Elder Scrolls franchise to the original Xbox, Bethesda were early supporters of Xbox Game Pass, bringing their games to new audiences across devices and have been actively investing in new gaming technology like cloud streaming of games. We will be adding Bethesda’s iconic franchises to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC. One of the things that has me most excited is seeing the roadmap with Bethesda’s future games, some announced and many unannounced, to Xbox console and PC including Starfield, the highly anticipated, new space epic currently in development by Bethesda Game Studios.
My Thoughts…..
Dear god this is huge, and I mean….HUGE! All the Bethesda franchises will be coming to Xbox Game Pass now Bethesda and their studios are all Xbox Studios now and the very fact that future titles such as Starfield as well as all the iconic franchises coming to both Xbox console and PC, with the next Generation of consoles coming in just two months is incredible.
Last month it was rumoured that WB Interactive was up for sale and Microsoft was interested but to see that now Bethesda is now an Xbox Studio is incalculable to the impact this will have going forward.
Xbox are on a roll….the afternoon before Pre-orders for Xbox Series X and S go live and Xbox buys Bethesda. The absolute “minerals” on Xbox right now!
