Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B

Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by tormeh on Monday September 21, 2020 @10:44AM (#24544058)

> 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.

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by mattmanser on Monday September 21, 2020 @11:22AM (#24544472)

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.

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by Sander_Marechal on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @05:28AM (#24552558)

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

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by mattmanser on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @08:45AM (#24553776)

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.

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by maxsilver on Monday September 21, 2020 @11:13AM (#24544377)

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

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