Microsoft has gone on a buying spree in the last couple of years, scooping up a wide variety of independent American and European video game developers. While video game development cycles are long enough that we still haven’t seen the entirety of the knock-on effects from Microsoft’s last few major acquisitions, we can make a few informed guesses now about what this means for the industry and the medium.

Today has been one of the defining moments of the ninth generation of consoles. This year’s Doom Eternal, the hotly anticipated sequel to 2016’s reboot of the foundational first-person shooter series, is estimated to have sold at least 3 million copies at launch, and the last game in the Elder Scrolls series, 2011’s Skyrim, had sold at least 30 million copies by 2016. While Bethesda has a mixed reputation among video game enthusiasts - its big open-world games are notoriously buggy the last couple of Wolfensteins were deeply flawed and 2018’s multiplayer Fallout 76 was a famous near-total misfire upon its debut - it remains one of the biggest companies in the industry. Microsoft will add several of the most widely-known and popular franchises in the current video game market to its portfolio, including the Elder Scrolls series ( Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc.), Doom, Wolfenstein, Dishonored, Fallout, Prey, and The Evil Within. The result is a sort of Matryoshka doll of associated outcomes every time you look at this deal, you can see a couple more major effects. Bethesda, in turn, has spent the last two console generations scooping up various intellectual properties, to the point where its lineup of software is a murderer’s row of classic, ongoing, and current hits. Microsoft started its working week by announcing that it intends to purchase ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion. Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda Softworks will put the company in control of some of the last generation’s strongest franchises.

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