ZeniMax’s Board Of Directors Has Been Dissolved Following Microsoft's Acquisition

Now let Phil sit on the throne.

Makes sense, no need for the old power structure with Microsoft in charge.

Sounds like some of board of directors, just there to cream the profits off.
Sometimes they are also great at daft decisions.

@Medic_Alert I was hoping for their independence as an Xbox fan. More for Xbox to manage makes me worried about quality control and getting projects out.

@Medic_Alert I have no clue why anyone would expect Microsoft to pay billions for them just to release their games on their competitors platforms. That is simply poor judgement.

@Bdbrady You wanted them to have independence? They've released the same game a dozen times. Still have yet to patch it properly and you pretty much have to rely on the community patch to have a semblance of a AAA game.

The only thing Bethesda is good at is making sure their games are as buggy as possible.

@Bdbrady MS is hands off with their studios. All of them operate almost autonomously. That's not always a good thing and has led to the problems in their first party releases, but Id rather have it that way then a formula template taskmaster. It wasn't always that way. In the 90s they micromanaged and destroyed every game studio they bought.

@Medic_Alert But, but, really TES 6 is gonna be on PS5! They didn't capitalize the word "Board" on the 375th page 3rd paragraph of the contract. Thats the exact number of blocks on the third layer of the Pyramid at Giza... Thats a sign the Microsoft really doesn't control it completely and existing franchises will still appear everywhere!

@NEStalgia i thought i was the only one who noticed the clear reference to the Giza pyramid!!!!!

@Krzzystuff Microsoft fanboys will deny the reference, but it's right THERE!!

@Medic_Alert I really don’t understand fanboyism. I get all the consoles and I enjoy the unique features that each one provides me.

@JayJ Let’s play a game here. Let’s say a game costs $10 million to make for Xbox. And $1 million to port to PlayStation. Xbox has 50,000,000 users. PlayStation has 100,000,000 users. To make things simple; let’s say these two groups are mutually exclusive.

Scenario 1) The game is console exclusive ends up being great. 20% of the user base on Xbox decides to buy the game. So 10 million copies sold. 2% of the competitor’s console decides to buy an Xbox for this killer app. So. Another 2 million sold for 12 million units total. Sounds great. But most of the converters will either get rid of their Xbox when done with the game; or continue to buy games on the competitors platform.

Scenario 2) the game is multi platform. 20% of each console base buys the game. 30 million units sold. 18 million more units sold for a small investment of $1 m.

I know this example is grossly oversimplified, but 30 million units sold is a heck of a lot more than 12 million units sold.

Console exclusives and console fanboyism doesn’t help anybody. It only hurts everybody.

@AgentGuapo Your looking at it from a Sony perspective and not the Microsoft angle which is getting people signed upto Gamepass, Yes you might get better overall sales if you make a game multiplatform but think of all those people who would sign up to Gamepass to play ES6 and they wouldn't even technically need to buy a xbox or pc to do so although I am sure then some people would be interested in upgrading to a xbox or windows pc to get a better experience which then equals more money for Microsoft.

Personally think MS taking all the control isn't necessarily a good thing. Don't get me wrong, it certainly could be, but MS haven't really had the highest of quality if past history is to go on (this can be said of many MS related products but for this specific example I'm thinking One X and Kinnect years along with not much quality games over that period).
This it the reason they are trying to buy quality that already exists - hence this acquisition. I'd be happier they left the decent companies alone and just 'stood on the shoulder of giants' so to speak piggy backing on their work rather than try and change them to be the 'Microsoft' way.
But who knows. Maybe they will improve what these companies have already been doing?

@AgentGuapo I agree that I have no idea how GP really works and how it will change the industry going forwards. Is it sustainable? Who knows but MS must think so or they wouldn't spend so much money buying everyone out there for this reason. Its certainly different to how Netflix works I think. I assume they tend to have deals with studios and fund some projects themselves - they don't spend billions of dollars buying up all the studios (or do they?).
But I'd assume MS have worked it all out. Either that or they are happy to take a crazy loss just to try and end their competitors then they will rise from the ashes with a new monopoly on gaming and only 1 choice left in gaming. Theirs! (cue evil laughter....)

@StonyKL Tosh

@AgentGuapo your numbers are out of tune with reality. They are much lower and over a generation vs day one sales. So that means that a lot get purchased on sale. Also 30% goes to Sony so the actual profit fir MS isn't enticing especially vs. getting people into gamepass...which is the ultimate goal. These games are gone from platforms that gamepass isn't on, as they would have been if anyone else purchased Zenimax. Xbox is open to having gamepass on Sony and Nintendo because again, gamepass is what they are selling.

I prefer grounded in to powder, but dissolved works too.

@Krzzystuff That's right and also most PS4 owners are FIFA/MADDEN/GTA/Call of Duty/Fortnite players because PS was the casual console, the console of the crowd, last generation. Nintendo and Microsoft stepped back in the beginning of last generation. I mean, most super-hyped PS4 Sony exclusives don't sell that much:

https://www.vgchartz.com/game/147592/the-last-of-us-part-ii/?region=All

Microsoft want studios for Game Pass and not for selling games on PS5, there is no doubt about it but Sony fans are delusional 😅.

@BlueOcean @Krzzystuff Out of interest do you think MS may eventually start allowing Game Pass on PS5 or Switch/Switch Pro? Part of me think they never would as it would basically mean no point in the Series X (unless they want to end with hardware), but then if they did they would make a crazy amount of money and would probably take a chunk of the PS Now sales with it.
Also the selfish in me would love the ability to get all the Sony exclusives, MS exclusives and the extra stuff from GP all on one machine.
Then the other question is would Sony block GP on their machine to stop it?

@StonyKL I don't think that allowing Game Pass would mean the end of Series X because it's the most powerful, relatively cheap and greatly optimised console, it's sold out almost everywhere and most gamers don't have a gaming PC so it's the premium choice for any console player and allows Microsoft to sell lounge gaming while Series S is a popular budget choice. It's likely Sony and Nintendo that don't want Game Pass on their consoles. Nintendo wants people to buy Nintendo 64/GameCube/Wii/Wii U ports full price on Switch and Sony wants players to buy new £€$70 games.

@StonyKL they already stated they are fine with gamepass being on other devices but it has to be the full experience. So you need to have a gamertag, achievements, use Xbox live etc. They lose money on consoles, i think they will still make them as i have no interest in PC gaming so they would lose me as a consumer if they didn't. Not everyone wants a PC. Honestly I see a bigger chance of PlayStation just becoming a publisher than Xbox stopping producing consoles. The money is in the software (games, gamepass) and peripherals (controllers) so if you can give them your money by having gamepass on a switch and they don't need to loose on selling you a console it's all good news to them. Plus the Xbox ecosystem grows, so more publishers will want their games in there.

@Krzzystuff Yes, I think that Microsoft would like the full Game Pass experience to be available on Switch and PS5. Consoles are an important way of delivering games but Sony publish games on PC and Nintendo on phones, I wonder if they'll ever do it on other consoles. I'm a bit tired of underpowered overpriced Nintendo hardware so I'd rather play Nintendo games somewhere else. Has anyone played Breath of the Wild on Wii U? And Deus Ex: Human Revolution? 🤣

Good. They’ve made poor decisions