This week corporation Microsoft became the sole owner of the company ZeniMax Media… The consequences of such a large-scale transaction will undoubtedly be felt in waves in many directions of the gaming industry for many years to come. On the occasion of such a massive merger, the portal VentureBeat published a large-scale article in which he analyzed the situation, and also tried to predict the future of a whole mass of teams, including Bethesda, Arkane Studios, id Software and many others, not forgetting the brand Xbox…
Journalist Jeff Grubb believes that Microsoft’s move was a kind of salvation for the developers of ZeniMax Media studios…
Below is the full text of the article…
Game division Microsoft acquired the company Bethesdaas publisher The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, behind $ 7.5 billion… It is hard to overestimate what exactly this means for gaming in general. Perhaps the easiest way to look at the situation is: the command Xbox became the owner of one of the few companies to have performed at E3 with their own conferences for years. Now the Internet does not abate in controversy, where people are trying to get to the bottom of the truth, trying to understand what awaits the Xbox and Game Pass. But in fact, attention should be paid to how unstable and difficult in development the business of creating high-quality gaming novelties is.…
Bethesda is one of the largest gaming publishers. As with Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Take-two, it took its place in the market by creating teams of developers and releasing games on current game consoles and PCs. Some of their loudest releases are role-playing adventures. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4… Despite all this, Bethesda’s parent company, known as ZeniMax Media, sells his business to a branch Xbox… But what was the reason for that? What circumstances prompted the owners ZeniMax to be tempted by such a deal?
In fact, the answers lie on the surface… You just need to look at the current successes Bethesdaand you can immediately see the scale of the challenges that game publishers face each year.
Only one failure separates from collapse
Game development is a hell of a complex and fickle business. The budgets required to create major blockbusters have in some cases grown to as much as $ 100 million in recent years. Numbers like these turn almost every potential release into a huge risk, where failure can lead to irreparable damage.…
Not least is the fact that developers, together with publishers, have a hard time understanding what the audience expects of them. Player requests are constantly changing. And even if we focus on a specific product, for example, we are talking about a first-person shooter with a military theme, then here begins a race with direct competitors, who may have not only a well-recognized series, but also budgets with resources significantly large quantities.
Thus, the growth of development budgets begins to grow even more – it is necessary to match the level of other studios. Is your game not as beautiful as Red Dead Redemption II or smaller in scale than Assassin’s Creed? Well, be sure to check it out at the sales.…
You can’t run away from service games
The next complex point is that even if the publisher manages to send a quality product to the store shelves, favored by critics, this does not at all guarantee that you will be able to compete for the attention of users who are drowning in their favorite service projects… A huge number of people are ready to return again and again to the endlessly growing Fortnite, Rainbow six: siege and Warframespending months and sometimes years behind them.
In such a media space, it begins to seem that only the exceptional, most prestigious and outstanding story-driven single-player games can break out of the crowd. And this, accordingly, raises the conditional bar of success even more. This is where the increasing talk that the market for “mid-budget” games is literally dissolving in front of our eyes follows. Today, success is the privilege of only the best of the best. In times Playstation 2 and even Xbox 360 the class “B” game was quite capable of recouping its production costs. And now such projects have to fight with their last bit of attention from users who are eagerly watching the next hit on the streaming platform Twitch…
Of course, publishers are also aware of the current state of the industry. After assessing all the risks, many of them come to a reasonable decision – it is necessary to launch service projects into production. But here, too, no one is safe from failure.only at the same time there is always the hope that with the proper desire and investment of resources, gradually it will be possible to attract a significant audience to the game.
Stores and subscriptions
Another desperate way to keep your business going is to open your own digital store, launch your own digital subscription, or both. By gaining access to direct monetization of its own audience, the publisher finds an additional source of income, potentially covering growing gaming budgets. You no longer need to give Steam any 30% of the proceeds. Instead, money flows in stable and consistent streams.
Only to launch such a system is incredibly expensive.… Epic Games continues to pour massive amounts of money into Epic Games Store, and the idea of competing with Steam is still a sweet dream, waving a hand somewhere over the horizon. In turn, the organization of a subscription service requires a large library of content that needs to be collected, it is perfectly understood that the audience may simply not need it.
Bethesda no longer has a way out
Bethesda has experienced all of the above… The company tried to compete with multi-million dollar singles games. At E3 2017, an initiative was launched dubbed # saveplayer1 (#save1player), encouraging gamers to think about the future of story-driven development. This was followed by a major expansion for Dishonored 2, horror The Evil Within 2 and shooter Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus…
None of these games have achieved significant financial success, even if they have been able to resonate with the press and dedicated fans.…
Bethesda attempted to launch a service-driven game. It turned out to be Fallout 76, launched in a completely terrifying way (albeit gradually a group of players rallied around it). Perhaps if its release had been delayed, the end result would have been much better. But this again reminds of the obvious thing. Creating and releasing new games is an incredibly complex and complex process.
Later Bethesda tried the tactic with my own launcher while watching how Electronic Arts are gradually phasing out exclusive content for their own digital store. This is where subscription services begin to develop. Ubisoft and EAbut considering the stable growth Steam and Xbox Game Pass, Bethesda there was simply no point in investing in similar initiatives.
The reality is that the industry today is in a period of transition, where the average face of modern publishers is not at all like the company that Bethesda is now.… Shareholders were faced with a dilemma: try to go through a painful restructuring process in an attempt to transform the company into something completely new, or simply give it to the hands that need it now. Microsoft was perfect for this role, if only because recently Game Pass, with its 15 million active subscribers, has actually become the new industry standard.…
By agreeing to such a deal, Bethesda together with all her inner teams won the chance to continue to exist and work together as a single organism. An alternative in the form of an independent ZeniMax Media offered much less promising options – massive layoffs, studio closings and declining production capacity, and therefore fewer games… This is perhaps the most important moment for Bethesda fans. Your favorite games aren’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future…
Looking from the perspective of those who suddenly fell on their heads 7.5 billion dollars – to refuse such money is simply unwise. Several years will pass, the market will correct itself, albeit temporarily. After that, it will be possible to come to it again, to open a new company with fresh forces, this time having at least a little idea of what is hidden behind the next turn.
Monopolies are bad. But life is generally not good enough
I do not want to succumb to nihilistic sentiments, but it is almost impossible to ignore the obvious consolidation in the gaming field. Tactics Microsoft almost mirrored the action Disney in related media areas. On the other hand, it cannot be said that the status quo in the gaming world has led to a healthy and flourishing market. ZeniMax could either sell itself or reorganize in a short time. To continue as before, most likely, it simply would not work…
Let us remind you that reorganization means layoffs and closings. Under Microsoft’s patronage (at least for now), the plan is simple – keep working as usual… Everything suggests that senior management Bethesda remains in place. Only for the salary is now responsible Satya Nadella…
So yes, Microsoft’s aggressive tactics raises questions and obviously chops off potential competition. Only the aforementioned risks are of such concern to publishers that there is no room for innovation and active competition in the AAA scene.
Ultimately, the deal between Microsoft and ZeniMax can be seen as a positive step. The corporation took over several development teams at once, giving them the opportunity to continue to create their favorite games. This cannot be compared with the reverse situation, where one company pays to another, prohibiting it from releasing a project on a platform from competitors.
But how such a large-scale reshuffle will affect the entire industry as a whole is problematic. Today, perhaps, we can limit ourselves to the fact that developers from Bethesda do not lose their job. And this is the most important thing.
Read also: Players are sweeping away the new Microsoft consoles: Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are in record demand…
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