Microsoft’s $ 7.5 billion acquisition of Zenimax Media, parent company of Dropout, The Elder Scrolls, en Doem manufacturer Bethesda, removed another set of obstacles and granted approval to continue of both the European Commission and US Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The Commission has concluded that the proposed acquisition will not raise any concerns, given the limited market position of the joint venture upstream and the presence of strong downstream competitors in the distribution of video games,” reads a new update. on the European Commission’s website.
The SEC similarly gave the green light. As the NME first reported, a Note of effectiveness was posted on the regulatory agency’s website on March 4, which means it is accept the details of the acquisition as submitted by Microsoft, including the effect on stock prices. Previously, Zenimax Media was a private company, while Microsoft is publicly traded.
The plans for the agreement was first announced last September, with the expectation that the acquisition will be completed later this year. While this will yield Microsoft’s total number of first party studios to a whopping 23, it remains to be seen how the company will use games from Bethesda that are traditionally multiplatform.
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Upcoming Bethesda Games Like Arkane’s Deathloop and Tango Gameworks Ghostwire: Tokyo, both of the PS5 console exclusives that would appear in 2021 will comply with the terms of the original transactions, Microsoft confirmed earlier. At the same time, the company is keeping the door open to make games beyond that The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield, Exclusive Xbox. In an interview with CNBC last september, Xbox boss Phil Spencer, said games like this would be available on Xbox Game Pass today, but tell Bloomberg that exclusivity will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
In an interview with Kotaku last october, Spencer said it would be possible for Microsoft to recover the cost of the acquisition without sacrificing games such as The Elder Scrolls VI and PlayStation. ‘[W]When I think about where people are going to play and the number of devices we had, and we have xCloud and PC and Game Pass and our console base, I do not have to send the games on any other platform the platforms we support to the transaction to make us work, ”he said.
Although the deal has not yet been finalized, it has apparently already had an impact on the rest of the game development landscape. Last month, Kotaku reports that Google Harrison, head of Google Stadiums told staff during an internal meeting that Microsoft’s acquisition was one of the factors that led it to close the book on developing first-party games in less than two years to form entirely new studios.