Bethesda Joins Xbox

Microsoft announced today that it has completed its acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, and welcomed the studio to Xbox.

“It’s an honor to welcome the eight incredibly talented development studios—Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios—and their passionate global communities to the Xbox family,” Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer writes. “Now that everything is official, we can begin working together to deliver more great games to everyone.”

The Bethesda acquisition, as I’ll call it, is a major step in Microsoft’s strategy of acquiring as many high-quality game studios as possible and bulking up its first-party game support on the Xbox platform, which spans consoles, PCs, and the cloud. And while Bethesda will continue to publish games to rival platforms, Spencer notes that “Xbox … will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players.”

So there it is. Microsoft will push Bethesda down the roads to platform exclusives.

Welcome aboard, Bethesda.