So, a few quick thoughts on the Bethesda deal. It's not the back catalog. Bethesda's games already have been cycling through Game Pass. And as discussed with price deflation, these old games are readily available on sale for $5-15 (1/4)
The deal is about 3 franchises: Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Starfield. Rest of the book (Doom, Dishonored, Wolfenstein etc.) isn't in the same league or galaxy. Note, the last iteration of Fallout, Fallout 76 (bit of an experiment) flopped hard. (2/4)
Starfield is the closest (1-2 years away at earliest) and has a lot of hype and anticipation. Elder Scrolls is likely next. None of these 3 are a slam dunk for their next release given recent history. Also, uncertain a game every 2-3 years for $7.5 billion will be worth it..(3/4)
given the economics even with aggressive unit/sub assumptions. Math really doesn't work if they go exclusive (I suspect some kind of time exclusivity instead). All this speaks to dramatic AAA content-lagging position they were in (4/4)
CD Projekt Red would have been the killer acquisition with its true "slam dunk" IP quality and developer talent - up there with Take-Two's Rockstar. But I suspect with Witcher IP taking off on the back of the Netflix show and Cyberpunk 2077 hype, the price just got too expensive
Do you really expect the next Elder Scrolls to be better than Witcher? I sincerely doubt it.
Also, crazy to think Sony bought Insomniac Games (developer of Spiderman which sold 13M+ units) for just $229 million last year. The price of poker has gone up my friends!
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