Microsoft’s $ 7.5 billion acquisition Zenimax Media, the parent company of Fall out, Ages Scrolls, and Doom producer Bethesda, removed another set of obstacles, gaining approval to continue from both the European Commission and the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The Commission has concluded that the proposed acquisition will not raise competition concerns, given the limited market position of the combined entity upstream and the presence of strong downstream competitors in the distribution of video games,” a new update states. on the European Commission’s website.
Similarly, the SEC gave the green light. As reported by NME for the first time, A Note of effectiveness was posted on the regulatory agency’s website on March 4, which means it was accepted purchase details as presented by Microsoft, including the effect on stock prices. Previously, Zenimax Media was a private company, while Microsoft is publicly traded.
Plans for understanding were first announced in September last year, with the acquisition expected to be completed by the end of this year. While this will bring the total number of game studios from Microsoft up to a large 23, it remains to be seen how the company will use Bethesda games, which have traditionally been cross-platform.
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The following Bethesda games like Arkane’s Deathloop and Tango Gameworks’ Ghostwire: Tokyo, both exclusives of the PS5 console to be released in 2021, will comply with the terms of those original offers, previously confirmed by Microsoft. At the same time, the company has kept the door open for making games beyond that, such as The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield, Xbox Exclusive. In an interview with CNBC in September last yearXbox boss Phil Spencer said such games will be available day in and day out on the Xbox Game Pass, but said Bloomberg that exclusivity would be decided on a case-by-case basis.
In an interview with Kotaku last October, Spencer said it would be possible for Microsoft to recoup the cost of the acquisition without bringing games like The Elder Scrolls VI the PlayStation. “[W]when I think about where people will play and the number of devices we had and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and the base of our consoles, I don’t have to send those games to any platform other than the platforms we support to make the business it works for us, “he said.
Although the business has not yet been completed, it seems that it has already had an effect on the rest of the game’s development landscape. Last month, Kotaku reported that the head of Google Stadium, Phil Harrison told employees in an internal meeting that the acquisition of Microsoft was one of the factors that led him to close the book on game development from the first part, less than two years after the formation of completely new studios.