Microsoft paid $7.5 billion in cash for ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks’s incredible network of game studios, but as you might imagine, that’s chump change for the world’s reigning software company. In an interview with CNET, Satya Nadella admitted that he was considering buying even more gaming giants to strengthen the Xbox brand, which received a serious steroid injection yesterday thanks to the addition of Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios.
“You can’t wake up one day and say, ‘Let me build a game studio,'” Nadella told CNET after news of the shocking acquisition hit the web. “The idea of having content is so we can reach larger communities.”
“Content is just the incredible ingredient to our platform that we continue to invest in,” Xbox head Phil Spencer added in the same interview. “This doubles the size of our creative organization.”
This is the part where we spin in our chairs and brainstorm random developers that Microsoft might be buying next. Bungie recently suggested that it had no interest in rejoining its previous family, so Halo’s original architects are probably out of the equation, but what about…uh…Sega?
That idea has actually been making the rounds on social media based on some very weak evidence (check the tweet below), but Microsoft does have an interesting history with the Japanese developer. If you’ll remember, the Dreamcast actually supported Windows CE to some degree. There were also buyout rumors going as far back as the PlayStation 2 era, when Sega was being crushed by Sony.
Sega’s consumer studios currently comprise CS1 R&D, CS2 R&D, and Online R&D. These aren’t the most memorable names, but they’ve been responsible for some pretty cool games as of late, such as the Yakuza, Monkey Ball, and Valkyria Chronicles series. With Microsoft’s cash, maybe we would finally get new, genuine sequels to classics such as Panzer Dragoon and Virtual Fighter.
bringing a report from the land of gamers. a select few are convinced that microsoft is buying sega next and it's lead to a resurgence of my absolute favourite kind of post pic.twitter.com/ng6WUmVMSN
— 🥱 bedtime jackson 😴 (@headfallsoff) September 22, 2020