Microsoft has announced that their acquisition of Bethesda is complete today and confirmed that some of the upcoming games will be exclusive to Xbox and PC.
This acquisition was first revealed last year when it was confirmed that Microsoft is in talks with Bethesda to acquire them in a deal that was worth more than seven billion dollars, or the largest acquisition that has been made by Microsoft in the gaming space. This deal wasn’t finalized until recently when the acquisition was approved in both the US and EU.
After this approval, Xbox Studio Head Phil Spencer has shared a blog post on this acquisition talking about what it means for their future.
“This is an exciting day for Xbox. Today we officially complete the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, ” said Phil Spencer. “Now that everything is official, we can begin working together to deliver more great games to everyone.”
“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.”
This confirms the earlier assumptions that Microsoft will use this acquisition to lock down Bethesda games exclusively to their platform and bolster the appeal of Game Pass. They are already releasing their first-party games on the same day and date as their official launch for Game Pass subscribers but going forward, Bethesda will also join the games lineup severely improving its appeal but with the potential loss of sales for some of the games on Microsoft Xbox’s competitor Sony PlayStation.
Bethesda is owned by Zenimax and this acquisition brings a total of eight studios under the control of Microsoft including Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios.
Some of the major upcoming games by Bethesda include Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI.
