Microsoft Buys Bethesda’s Parent

Not good! Anyone who played Fallout3 remembers Windows Games Live did nothing but screw it up. Also Microsoft announced the benefits gained would be minimal for the first few years. That’s not good either. That means Microsoft understands it will take a long time to make a profit from this deal. Which begs the question why’d they do it? Anyone remember Microsoft buying Nokia? Microsoft ended up writing that multi billion dollar purchase off as a loss. Mergers and acquisitions always take away from the market more than they bring. My guess is five years from now gamers will look back sadly at this moment. However, Bethesda has behaved very badly as a game studio and perhaps this will save them from themselves. But all game developers I’ve been in contact with that have worked with or under Microsoft did not value the experience. ZeniMax owns a lot of intellectual property and tech patents. If things go south, profit-wise, with this deal Microsoft WILL simply terminate Bethesda’s and id’s existence and transfer their tech goodies to Microsoft developers. Microsoft has over $100 billion in the bank so they can afford to loose $7 billion and keep on going like nothing happened. It’s not personal just business. If that happens the gamers will have to deal with the fallout.