Zenimax Media is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, a video game publisher with many popular franchises including Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Doom, and Wolfenstein. Their games have sold millions of copies across multiple platforms and have gained notoriety among the gaming community for their incredible world-building and gameplay.

There are many factors in why Microsoft has acquired Bethesda. With this acquisition, they went from fifteen to twenty-three studios in Xbox Games Network. Another important fact to note is that Bethesda games have always sold more on Playstation systems than Xbox systems. This acquisition will pull strictly-Bethesda fans on console to consider buying an Xbox Series X or S instead of a Playstation 5 this November. 

Complaints about Xbox consoles in the past have included the fact that Xbox doesn’t have as many exclusive games compared to other companies and their systems. Xbox seems to now want exclusives for their brand. They’ve acquired numerous studios for their platform, and have financed console versions of other games. The only problem with this, however, is that Xbox has been supporting Nintendo Switch with their own exclusive games, including Cuphead and Ori and the Blind Forest.

But Nintendo isn’t the reason Microsoft purchased Zenimax. While Nintendo is a competitor to Xbox, the company is more focused on the casual market with the Nintendo Switch. Nonetheless, a motivation for the purchase might be because of their competition with Sony. Sony and Xbox are competing for the best-selling next generation consoles with the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. By taking one of the largest publishers in gaming, Sony has a real threat in the console wars compared to the previous generation, where poor marketing led to the Xbox One not doing as well as Microsoft only selling around 50 million, while Sony sold 112 million Playstation 4s with their large quantity of compelling exclusive games.

Until the next generation of consoles release later in November, Xbox has once again impacted the gaming community.