Man fuck the Xbox brigade lately. You guys are way too happy about a trillion dollar company swinging their dick around in an industry they’ve up till this point failed in. Ohhh yeaaa!!! Microsoft bought another company! Wooo! Yes Microsoft, win the exclusives war by just buying an assload of developers!! Woo! That’s what we all wanted! That’s what we meant by Xbox needs better exclusives. Not stupid garbage like restructuring 343i to make halo games that aren’t ass. Not taking the initiative off of making more tired ass gears games and letting them make new ip, noo that sounds so booorrringg! What’s that? Rare finally got off shit Kinect games and made a good popular game, ew what a fluke. Quick, buy more studios. Oh a publisher, yea why not! Everyone’s way better off if Bethesda games don’t come to PlayStation anymore. That’s a win win. Win because windows and Xbox players can play them. And a definite win because the millions on PlayStation can’t. Woooh!
Seriously. It’s trippy seeing this shit. Like I can’t imagine music fans being excited by universal media group partnering with Pandora to release all their music on that platform only. I can’t see movie buffs being happy about A24 being bought by Apple and all their movies only coming to Apple TV. This is just weird.
Relax. It's the current industry climate. Big budget game development is getting very difficult to maintain. There is a reason Bethesda sold to a first party. They were one of the smaller Western publishers. Large in their own right but certainly nowhere near as large as Ubisoft, EA, Activision, or Take-Two. Despite the great successes of Skyrim, Fallout 4, and more recently Doom Eternal, they also had some pretty difficult times lately with underperforming titles that they both developed and published. You can't have one major hit off the jump every few years while bankrolling a bunch of other games that don't manage to sell that well for what you're spending.
Bethesda and Id Software were pretty much doing all the heavy lifting. Mind you, some of these games didn't sell terribly and ESO bounced back after going free-to-play, but ZeniMax was still in a position where they could either continue as they were and risk being less valuable over time or sell while their value was higher and ensure they get to keep making the games they want. They had 8 mouths (studios) to feed and not enough coming back for them all. Now these studios that might have eventually found themselves on the chopping block get more chances. As I said in another thread, Howard and Hines made it fairly clear with their comments that Microsoft felt like the best home for them based on their history.
It might suck for some people that they can't just own a PlayStation or Nintendo device and get to play the next Elder Scrolls but consider the possibility that the same could have been true for Xbox players if Sony or Nintendo had been willing to pay the asking price and ZeniMax felt comfortable with them. Nintendo did the same thing to Xeno and PlayStation fans years ago when they bought Monolith Soft. The team that was responsible for Xenogears under Squaresoft (though not a separate studio then) and Xenosaga under Namco. The Xeno series had long been one that was found only on PlayStation platforms but today it is a beloved Nintendo franchise. Especially since despite still owning Xenogears, Square Enix refuses to do anything with it. I can assure you that if PlayStation makes acquisitions, and they will, they will not hesitate to ensure those games don't go to any other console.
Within this industry, few other companies outside the big three had the financial means to purchase ZeniMax. Other options may have been Activision, Electronic Arts, or Ubisoft. Under Activision you would have seen all 8 studios refocused on churning out a new Elder Scrolls, Fallout, or Doom every year while outsourcing other IP to lesser studios. Under EA you would have seen nearly every game become a live service or riddled with microtransactions with most of the studios mismanaged and shuddered within a few years. Ubisoft would turn every IP into an open world setting, catering to "woke" culture, and using three times the number of developers necessary to do a project. Making everyone continue to wonder how in the fuck Ubisoft can afford any project they make.
In other words, no matter who bought them it was going to suck for someone somehow. At the very least, be thankful these games and studios will continue to exist for the near future, that it will still be some time before ZeniMax games are found nowhere but Xbox and PC, and that if you REALLY want to play them you have two options to do so. Don't take this so seriously. All of these companies exist for the sake of making money and they just use game developers to make it for them. So just breathe, enjoy what you enjoy, and let these companies duke it out. Getting fired up over it isn't going to change any direction the industry takes and games really shouldn't be so serious that you blow a blood vessel over it. Unless you're fighting the boss of Dead or Alive 4. Fuck that bitch. She owes me a controller.