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A comment on Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks for $7.5B. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by georgeecollins on Monday September 21, 2020 @02:27PM (#24546749)
Many indie developers are barely making it. Some are killing it. New ideas come from indies, but sometimes from big companies too. Big companies depend on distribution and marketing, small companies depend on innovation. I have been in video games for twenty five years. It has always been like that.
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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by ethbr0 on Monday September 21, 2020 @04:01PM (#24547775)
Where it seems to have broken down is via vertical integration.

When publishers were publishers and developers were developers (80s and 90s), it seemed like there was healthier competition. Even if there were a lot of abusive deals struck.

Now that we have giant, integrated publisher + development conglomerates, there's zero incentive to step out of that structure to publish a popular indie game.

It feels like news sites prohibiting links to external sites, and the world's the poorer.

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by georgeecollins on Monday September 21, 2020 @08:41PM (#24549817)
I strongly disagree. No publisher or developer conglomerate dominates today more than Sega, Nintendo, or EA did at different times 25- 30 years ago. The past always looks great in retrospect. Today's ecosystem is so much more diverse.
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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by phone8675309 on Monday September 21, 2020 @04:04PM (#24547811)
It feels like the video games industry has done the reverse of Hollywood.

Hollywood went from a vertically integrated system that handled production, distribution, and exhibition by a single entity to a system where production, distribution, and exhibition were done by separate entities.

It feels like game development went the reverse way.

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by quanticle on Monday September 21, 2020 @04:28PM (#24548083)
It's important to note that the only reason that Hollywood went from a vertically integrated system to a disaggregated one is because the US Government filed an antitrust suit that forced the disaggregation [1]. And now that that antitrust pressure is gone, we see Hollywood slowly returning to a vertically integrated system, where studios, distribution networks and theaters are all operating in close conjunction to push movies that "ought" to be profitable [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

[2]: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywo...

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by ethbr0 on Monday September 21, 2020 @04:34PM (#24548146)
Someone can correct me, but I'd put blame for the trend on EA / Madden NFL (~1990?).

It showed what kind of profits you could make off yearly refreshes of software, while minimizing development costs.

Why would an MBA take a chance on new IP when they have the above as an option?

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Re:Microsoft to acquire ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks... by georgeecollins on Monday September 21, 2020 @08:43PM (#24549827)
Yes and no. Big companies do development, but they don't necessarily do more development than they used to. EA and Activision actually probably develop fewer titles than they did twenty years ago. They just spend a lot more on each title.

But again: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Nintendo have always been vertically integrated. This is not new.

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