What do studio closures mean for Xbox strategy? | Opinion
The news that Xbox was going to buy Bethesda caught me by surprise. And not just because of the sheer size of the $7.5bn acquisition.
It surprised me because it hadn’t matched what Xbox had been telling us. I’d interviewed Xbox senior management several times over the proceeding 18 months, and when it came to acquisitions, they were talking about the need for games that would appeal to PC players, and gamers in countries like Southeast Asia, Japan, Europe, South America and so on.
Bethesda is a primarily Western-focused games company best-known for RPGs and shooters. Xbox already had Halo and Gears of War and Fable, and just acquired RPG specialists Obsidian. Bethesda didn’t seem to fit the remit.
But, of course, the opportunity to own IP like Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Doom was probably an opportunity Microsoft couldn’t pass up. Fable is wonderful, but it’s not exactly Skyrim.
Yet this is why I was so fearful of the mass consolidation that was taking place in the games industry just a few years ago. When you’re spending $7.5 billion on Bethesda, the bulk of that cost is because of Bethesda Game Studios and its major RPG franchises. It isn’t because of Dishonored or The Evil Within. I took a bit of a kicking from Xbox fans on social media when I admitted I wasn’t a fan of Microsoft’s bid to buy Activision. But it wasn’t because I felt the deal would somehow destroy PlayStation, but rather because the bulk of that $69 billion was for Call of Duty and Candy Crush, and not Crash Bandicoot or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
"Microsoft's gamble hasn’t paid off, and it’s the teams that are paying the price"
It's not just Microsoft, to be clear. All acquisitions of a certain size inevitably come with things the buyer has no need for. When EA acquired Codemasters, it was to get hold of the lucrative F1 series and not because of the Dirt or Grid franchises. Even recently, when Take-Two bought Gearbox, that was mostly to protect its interest in the Borderlands IP, and not because of its
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