> IMO Bethesda decided to sell to MS because their recent games cannot generate enough popularity

Truly mystifying why they'd want to create an MMO. It's as if they hadn't been following the news. The success of WoW is incredibly hard to repeat, and most studios who try fail, no matter how much money they throw at it.

The MMO space has been, WoW aside, a money bonfire for one and a half decade at this point.

ESO has been pretty successful, 15 million players:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjagneaux/2020/03/30/elder-...

I'd guess that the article has it wrong and they're mainly on the free tier and that's not the subscriber count though.

ESO has no free tier. You need to buy the base game.

I forgot, that's true. But it wasn't a big hit on release, I'd imagine the vast majority of those are bought when it's on sale, like the steam summer sale.

That, and also, Bethesda already owns the (3rd largest? ish?) MMORPG on the planet, with Elder Scrolls Online.

Fallout 4 was a massive hit and they've got a new franchise about to come out (Starfield). Wolfenstein + Dishonored have consistently sold well.

In May 2016, 5 years after Skyrim was released, it was valued at $2.5 billion, now it's being bought 4 years later for $7.5 billion.

I appreciate some Bethesda fans have a weird agenda, but you are wrong. Also, Starfield has been written in an overhauled engine, so again, wrong[1]. Although to be honest, it's probably the same engine with updates and they're just saying that to try and stop the small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine with every new Bethesda game. That's then always a massive hit.

[1]https://bethesda.net/en/article/4IwKWIj174Cb2QNTTtBAEb/todd-... - paragraph 9 "[The new console cycle has] led to our largest engine overhaul since Oblivion, with all new technologies powering our first new IP in 25 years, Starfield"

Fallout 76 was an unmitigated disaster and absolute embarrassment to the studio however [1].

[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8

So? Lots of studios have flops. The point is they've had plenty more successes since Skyrim. I even forgot to mention DOOM and Prey. And don't forget, FO76 wasn't even made by the main studio.

Adding the back catalogue to gamepass (and probably taking it all off steam), is part of the price too.

Hell, if the price was $7.5 billion even after the FO76 flop, what would it have been if they'd pulled it off? Making a whole new type of MMO.

Fallout 76 is even the exact sort of "live service" game that seems to do really well on Xbox Game Pass. (Sea of Thieves is often mentioned by Microsoft as a gold standard live service game that exceeds exceeds "sales expectations" precisely because of Game Pass; it probably wouldn't have sold as much as it has without Game Pass.) Rumors are that when Bethesda put FO76 on Game Pass the player count went way up, though Microsoft remains mysterious about actual Game Pass numbers, and FO76 also released a major expansion pack and cross-play at the same time, so if those rumors are true it may not just have been Game Pass but the confluence of things.

That video is a year and a half old. I hear the game has improved since then, but I haven't tried it myself.

So was No Man's Sky when it came out. Though rare, sometimes studios do the right thing over time. FO76 seems to be having a better second act.

I think comparison is a bit unfair since nms is (mostly) single player while fo76 is not. If nms gets good (i believe it is good btw, I play it regularly on VR) it would still sell 5 years later but fo76 would be dead if it can't keep up player count high.

So yeah, a failed multiplayer/mmo game is a bigger failure imo, because it is hard/impossible to recover from

See also, Final Fantasy XIV. From disaster to IMO one of the most magnificent games ever created.

> ... stop the small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine with every new Bethesda game.

Seeing as there are still some ancient problems with CreationKit (physics over 60fps, widescreen support, etc), I'll be interested to see how much they will overhaul it and how many old bugs will have to be fixed by the community (see nexusmods "Universal Patch" for any CK Bethesda game).

FWIW the 60fps issue was introduced in Oblivion (it didn't exist in Morrowind) and that was because of the physics integration. However that is an integration issue and something they have actually fixed - in other games (e.g. Skyrim VR).

Similarly with widescreen support, there isn't really an issue with it, you can use any resolution by modifying configuration files but they just... do not bother to polish it up.

(note that any bug that can be fixed with normal mods isn't really an engine bug but a content bug - though some mods do work by hooking the engine executable)

The creationkit games are one of the few that have the two critical components that allow this, mod support and extensive modding communities.

It's easy to have no fixes, when it can't be fixed.

> I appreciate some Bethesda fans have a weird agenda, but you are wrong

> small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine

You post comes across a bit aggressive and insulting.

If Rockstar ever gets acquired, this will be one of the most expensive deals ever. They routinely sell games in the dozens of millions of units.

GTA V, mainly thanks to their online offering, has been the 2nd best selling video game of all time, second only to Minecraft... which Microsoft bought in 2014 for $2.5 billion.

Mind you, Minecraft's income comes from a lot of merchandise and spinoffs, whereas GTA is mainly from the game itself.

I was curious; RDR 2, also a Rockstar game, is the #14 best selling game of all time apparently; I didn't know it did that good. The other GTA games are also in the top 50.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...

Note that two thirds of the sales of Minecraft occured after 2014[1].

[1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-26-minecrafts-con...

It makes me happy to see RDR2 do well financially. It's a breathtaking game that's not just about mindless fast-paced action all the time.

And then you shoot a squirrel.

I rarely buy new games at full price, but I bought RDR2 twice: first for the PS4, the on the PC.

Rockstar is owned by Take Two Interactive. TTWO's entire market cap (including Rockstar and 2K) is about half of EA.

EA is much bigger in terms of revenue.

Contrary to popular opinion, Rockstar is actually not a competent game developer.

I'm curious how you measure competence.

Virtually every release Rockstar does sells millions. And from my point of view their games are fun too.

Rockstar makes multiplayer titles, but doesn't have an engine that's capable of dealing with that (leading to an absurd number of bugs and performance problems), and they have no security at all, so their games are only playable on not-yet-cracked consoles. Rockstar even went so far as to include a "finger of god" feature in GTA, which allowed their admins to kick players from and mess with the single player mode, except Rockstar has no security, so mod menu developers figured out how anyone with a menu could use those features to mess with literally anyone's single player. They eventually removed that feature, which as I recall is one of maybe two or three times they fixed a security problem. Previously mod menu users could reset character stats and outright ban other players. It's incredibly broken, even though financially successful, based on ethically questionable marketing of ingame purchases to minors. RDR2 may be beautiful, but performance is bad. RDO runs on the exact same system as GTA, so zero security and unplayable on PC.

I've played most Rockstar titles, but never multiplayer. I don't understand how a lack of security means they're only playable on uncracked consoles. That sounds backwards. I've only ever played them on uncracked consoles. (and it's not just "yet", I just don't crack any consoles I own)

The performance is good enough for any of my purposes. I don't doubt it could be better.

The security thing sounds like a real problem. I didn't know about any of that.

The problem is not what you do with your console or PC, the problem is that multiplayer is P2P and a complete lack of security, anticheat and hardening means that anyone with a mod menu can do practically everything with your game (kick from the game, ban you from in-game features, make the game stuck, crash it, give you bad FPS, flashing or shaking screen, follow you into every session you join and even damage your installation). The only thing that prevents all of this is the platform not being cracked.

How do you define competency? Games sold, aggregate review score, or some other arbitrary metric that you're using to gatekeep on game quality?

My point was that they know how to make games that sell by truckloads. Quality of development is another matter altogether

The people that made GTA great left so that well is going to dry up pretty quick

So more flying motorcycles that shoot rockets? :-) I think they ran out of ideas some time ago unless you count my example.

How do you know? Do you have any source information? I had not read of this before

> their recent games cannot generate enough popularity

I wouldn't be so sure. Sure, they are not GTA or CoD, but Prey, Dishonored or Doom have all sold rather good.