Xbox Absorbs Bethesda in Massive Deal

All of Bethesda’s games are now coming to Game Pass.

Sep 27, 2020

This week, Microsoft announced that they were going to acquire Zenimax Media, owners of respected RPG developer Bethesda Game Studios. Bethesda, famous for games like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout as well as its sister studios like id Software, makers of hit games like DOOM and Quake, are joining the Xbox umbrella. Compared to PlayStation’s lineup of exclusive games like Ratchet and Clank, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Spider-Man, Xbox has always struggled with giving a wide variety of games to keep people playing. Now with many more world-class studios under their belt, Xbox is primed to dominate the next generation. For an idea of how big this is, Disney purchased Star Wars for almost half of what Microsoft did on Bethesda and its long list of game series’ and technology.

Bethesda owned some of the most influencial game series' ever.

What This Means for Players

With Xbox having so many more studios under their belts, it is a fair question to wonder to the games coming to other platforms. Xbox head Phil Spencer stressed that not every game coming from Bethesda will be exclusive to Xbox or PC, but that those will be handled on a case by case basis. Likely, big tentpole titles like Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield might still arrive on PlayStation, but smaller games will most likely stay with Xbox. This announcement is bad news for PlayStation fans for sure, but luckily Microsoft has been making it as easy as possible to access their library. All of their games are coming to PC (many of them on Steam), and xCloud makes it possible to stream their entire Game Pass library on your phone, tablet, or computer without needing to own a console. The Game Pass library itself is about to be expanded with all of Bethesda’s games as well, with DOOM Eternal being the first to arrive this October.

The Elder Scrolls and Xbox have gone hand in hand since Morrowind on the original Xbox.

xCloud and Orion

Bethesda and id Software were working on their own technology to help game streaming like Google Stadia and xCloud be even better. Last year at E3 2019, id Software showed off what the technology was capable of by running DOOM 2016 at 4K resolution and maximum settings with little to no latency at all. Combining Orion and xCloud’s technology might make xCloud easily the best games streaming option out there. With how many more games Game Pass has and continues to grow, it is hard to find a reason to use Google Stadia at this point.