The first company Microsoft purchased that I'm jealous of. Good for them!

They way you talk about MS is how people talked in the 90's about Sony.

Sony buys time exclusivity for MKIII, for Tomb Raider...Buys Psygnosis...Buys sigil entertainment (syphon filter) buys Naughty Dog and so on ...

I mean, the same can be said about Microsoft with this acquisition, if Sony was already aggressive in consolidating content for their platform, this news could make them go for larger publishers, most likely a huge Japanese publisher like Square or Capcom if they went down that route. Just because Sony isn't worth a trillion doesn't mean they can't drop billions on studio acquisitions. They've already invested billions in their other divisions like music (2 Billion+) and cameras (9 Billion) so investing billions in their gaming divisions is not out of the question.

I think if Microsoft bought Bethesda before the start of this generation, when Sony was on the verge of bankruptcy, it would have been a lot more dire, especially since SIE IP's weren't as valuable as they are now. 

If true, incoming Master Chief and Doom Slayer crossover

Any evidence of this? As far as I'm aware people use game pass for the games on game pass. 

People with game pass buying games on game pass? I'm not sure what you mean there if you have game pass you have unlimited access to the games on there.

With them paying for every game that is on game pass and then the full cost of their first party games have to be also made back on game pass I very much doubt it's a profitable service right now. They need sheer volume of users to turn a profit on the service. Like Netflix gradually increases the price and needs as many users on as many devices as possible, Microsoft needs to do the same.

Microsoft can afford to absorb that cost as well as the other costs of making and running a Console, Sony cannot which is why you won't see them respond in the same way.

Interesting news but nothing to really worry about for the next few years till fallout 723897238947 or ES comes out. By that time MSFT will know what direction the console war is going.....and it won't be their way (fingers crossed) :)

To me, this is like the last season of Community being on Yahoo video. Great show, but why on the service that nobody cares about? (Yes I know Community wasn't doing all too well and it being on Yahoo Video was the only way it was getting six seasons prior to its movie, but the point is that the platform is doing too poorly for this to work).

IT pisses me off because I spent the last 10 years slowly drifting away from Xbox, constantly hoping to move on or for them to step their game up. I got an Xbox 360 in 2008 or 2009 or something, it immediately red-ringed, I got another one, I rarely used it for fear of it red-ringing again, then I caught up on 50+ Xbox games but never played them for the aforementioned Red Ring concerns. The entire latter half of the 360's life went downhill after 2009 or so, but I bought an Xbox One in 2014 in the hopes that they'd come out the gate kicking. They didn't, and the Xbox One was barren from 2016-2020. 10 years of absolutely nothing made me decide to focus on PS5 and Switch because Sony and Nintendo have actually been giving me games I give a shit about..

...then they go and do this? I love Bethesda games. I don't like Microsoft. Even if Microsoft doesn't destroy Bethesda's IP, I still have to go through their channels to get the games I want.

Is that selfish? yeah. Yeah it is. I'm not pretending here. And no this isn't the same as Sony acquiring Insomniac or Sucker Punch. Not even remotely close. Stop saying that. It's not true and you know it. This would be like Sony acquiring Ubisoft or Activision or something. I wouldn't WANT that (Bethesda is one out of two of the big five publishers - EA, Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Square-Enix - with Square-Enix being the other one, that I actually care about), but still. I just...guh. This sucks. It's smart on Microsoft's part, but sucks for me.

Same primary team works on both Fallout and Elder Scrolls, switching over when one is finished, but Starfield throws a monkey wrench into that formula.  Skyrim to Fallout 4 was 4 years.  Fallout 4 was released in 2015 and we know Starfield is nearly done.  the next Elder Scrolls was in early production in 2018 but probably won't see dedicated production until Starfield is totally finished.  Wouldn't surprise me if we have to wait at least 4 more years for another Elder Scrolls.

At least nothing about Starfield is likely to be changed by Microsoft, and quite possibly nothing about Elder Scrolls 6.  At least, I hope.

Only just read this now.... Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrr