My point in bringing up this purchase is that it seemed to fit well with Microsoft's mission as a software company, while gaming seemed like a side project where Xbox console sales were less than $2 billion in 2019.īut then I brushed up on the homework - I had done this podcast and article in 2018: The $100 Billion Cult: Video Gaming & Global Youth Culture - and was awakened to find that projections for the size of the gaming market in 2021 are now $200 billion.Īnd I also took a closer look at their year-end fiscal 2020 report (Q4 ended in June). While the price of $7.5 billion was the same, the GitHub deal was done purely with Microsoft stock, while this week's bid for ZeniMax is all cash. Together, the two companies will empower developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, accelerate enterprise use of GitHub, and bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences." That was followed in 2018 by a flurry of smaller deals before this week's record gaming investment, which carried a familiar price tag nonetheless.Īlso in 2018, Microsoft announced it would "acquire GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform where more than 28 million developers learn, share and collaborate to create the future. One of the first big gamer-industry acquisitions by CEO Satya Nadella was Minecraft maker Mojang in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Microsoft also plans to run Bethesda as its own division, with leadership and structure intact." "The move grows the number of in-house Xbox game development studios to 23, up from 15 earlier, giving it control of some of the game industry's most popular franchises. In his piece What Microsoft's $7.5B purchase of Bethesda parent ZeniMax means for Xbox Series X, CNET editor-at-large Ian Sherr observed this on Tuesday. In the video that accompanies this article, I go over many of the details of the $7.5 billion deal including great analysis from the writers and editors at CNET like Jeff Bakalar who produced a couple of excellent videos I reference. Microsoft MSFT may have lost the battle to own a stake in TikTok, but they are winning on multiple fronts in the gaming wars as they capitalize on pandemic trends and the surge in GaaS, or gaming as a subscription service.Īnd this week's announced acquisition of privately-held ZeniMax - owner of studios that create the post-apocalyptic Fallout games and the fantasy series The Elder Scrolls - further expands their empire just ahead of the November launch of the next-gen Xbox video game consoles.
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