Money Talks
Microsoft Bought a $7.5 Billion Security Blanket
The massive deal for Bethesda exposes the fallacy of ownership and the anxiety of a giant
Money Talks is a column that explores what happens when business, the economy, and culture collide.
What’s $7.5 billion between friends? That’s been the general reaction of the gaming and business press to the news last week that Microsoft will be spending that sum to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of, among others, powerhouse video-game studio Bethesda Game Studios, maker of Fallout 4, Doom, and Skyrim. Coverage of the deal has focused on how Bethesda will help Microsoft’s overall gaming strategy, by driving users to its Netflix-style GamePass service (which offers users access to an array of games for $15 a month), and whether Microsoft will now make Bethesda’s games exclusive, keeping them from owners of Sony’s PlayStation 4 and the forthcoming PlayStation 5.
In other words, the discussion has been all about whether it makes sense for Microsoft to ally itself with Bethesda. But in the process, a bigger, and in some ways more interesting, question has been skipped over: Even if allying with Bethesda makes sense (which it does), why would Microsoft buy ZeniMax to do it?
