It’s still somewhat hard to believe that one of the major third party publishers in the industry, Bethesda, was bought in full by Microsoft yesterday. It’s hard to parse just how seismic shift that can potentially be for the video game industry as we know it, and that’s not just because Bethesda games are guaranteed to hit Game Pass on day 1 now. But it seems it could be just the beginning, depending on how much you want to look into the CEO of the company’s words.
In a long interview with CNET, CEO Satya Nadella spoke at length about various things Microsoft. When talking about the acquisition of Bethesda, he mentioned that part of the acquisition was the need creation of content for their services, saying, “You can’t wake up one day saying, ‘Let me build a game studio.’ The idea of having content is so we can reach larger communities.” The most eye-raising thing here, though, is when talking about the future, he said that Microsoft will consider buying even more companies in the future.
Whether Nadella is referring to another gigantic purchase such as the Bethesda one or something smaller isn’t clear. Even before yesterday’s announcement, Microsoft has been on something of a buying spree with smaller studios such as Double Fine, inXile, Obsidian Entertainment, and Ninja Theory, all of which were purchased by the company in a relatively short time frame. Of course, those pale in comparison in scope to the Bethesda acquisition. In the end, it’s hard to say what Microsoft will do next, but at the very least, it seems anything and everything is on the table.