GIVE US TWO MINUTES AND WE'LL GIVE YOU THE RETRO WORLD

Microsoft buys Zenimax Media for an astonishing $7.5 billion

"Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs, and they don’t have a grudge against me, so maybe I will be able to reengage with some of my old titles"

John Carmack

Microsoft certainly isn’t afraid to make hefty purchases in order to strengthen its position in the console market, but its most recent acquisition makes its 2002 purchase of Rare for $375 million look like chump change. On 21 September – the day before its new Xbox Series X and S consoles were available for preorder – Microsoft’s Phil Spencer revealed that the company had just purchased Bethesda’s parent company, Zenimax Media for a staggering $7.5 billion. To put that in context, that’s $3 billion more than Disney paid to acquire Lucasfilm in 2012 and 13.84 times what it paid for Rare back in 2002 (adjusted for inflation, of course).

It means that in one fell swoop Microsoft has acquired several critically acclaimed games studios, including id Software, MachineGames, Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane Studios and Shinji Mikami’s Tango Gameworks, as well as everything the studios own. In terms of franchises, enduring classics like Doom, Wolfenstein, Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series are now fully owned by Microsoft, as well as popular modern franchises such as Rage, Dishonored and The Evil Within. It’s arguably one of the biggest gaming acquisitions of all time and the unexpected news sent shockwaves through the industry when it was revealed.