Bethesda Now Officially Part of Microsoft, Some New Games Exclusive To Xbox & PC

Last year, Microsoft made headlines when they announced that they would be purchasing ZeniMax Media, the parent company of developers such as Bethesda (Elder Scrolls) and id Software (Doom). Today, that $7.5 billion acquisition has been officially finalized.
In a blog post on Xbox Wire, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer welcomed ZeniMax and all of their development studios to the Xbox family:
“Today we officially complete the acquisition of ZeniMax Media, parent company of Bethesda Softworks. 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. Now that everything is official, we can begin working together to deliver more great games to everyone.”
To celebrate the occasion, you can check out Bethesda’s “Here’s to the Journey” video down below. Spencer also promised additional Bethesda games would be added to Xbox Game Pass later this week, so keep an eye out for those.
One of the things on everyone’s mind since the announcement last year though was whether or not Bethesda games like Elder Scrolls would now be exclusive to Xbox. Spencer broke the silence on that:
“With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass 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.”
This is massive news for Xbox fans! For the longest time now, Microsoft has only had exclusives like Halo, Gears of War, & Forza. They’re big names that can sell systems, but adding a line-up of heavy-hitting franchises like Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, & Wolfenstein to their roster of exclusives definitely makes them a major competitor going into next-gen. Sony has always been known as the top dog when it comes to exclusives, but they really have to step their game up with Xbox making big moves like this.
Now, with everything all official and whatnot, this acquisition means Microsoft now has 23 studios developing games for it. The company spent the end of the last console generation going on a spending spree. Despite these efforts, the initial release schedule for the Xbox Series X/S has been lacking so far. Still, the next-gen console race has only just begun, and I’m expecting to see big things from Microsoft in the next few years.
Hopefully, one of those things will be The Elder Scrolls VI. I’m not willing to bet on that though.