IMO Bethesda decided to sell to MS because their recent games cannot generate enough popularity. They can only hoped for skyrim and are struggling with their old engine.
Truly mystifying why they'd want to create an MMO. It's as if they hadn't been following the news. The success of WoW is incredibly hard to repeat, and most studios who try fail, no matter how much money they throw at it.
The MMO space has been, WoW aside, a money bonfire for one and a half decade at this point.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjagneaux/2020/03/30/elder-...
I'd guess that the article has it wrong and they're mainly on the free tier and that's not the subscriber count though.
In May 2016, 5 years after Skyrim was released, it was valued at $2.5 billion, now it's being bought 4 years later for $7.5 billion.
I appreciate some Bethesda fans have a weird agenda, but you are wrong. Also, Starfield has been written in an overhauled engine, so again, wrong[1]. Although to be honest, it's probably the same engine with updates and they're just saying that to try and stop the small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine with every new Bethesda game. That's then always a massive hit.
[1]https://bethesda.net/en/article/4IwKWIj174Cb2QNTTtBAEb/todd-... - paragraph 9 "[The new console cycle has] led to our largest engine overhaul since Oblivion, with all new technologies powering our first new IP in 25 years, Starfield"
Adding the back catalogue to gamepass (and probably taking it all off steam), is part of the price too.
Hell, if the price was $7.5 billion even after the FO76 flop, what would it have been if they'd pulled it off? Making a whole new type of MMO.
Seeing as there are still some ancient problems with CreationKit (physics over 60fps, widescreen support, etc), I'll be interested to see how much they will overhaul it and how many old bugs will have to be fixed by the community (see nexusmods "Universal Patch" for any CK Bethesda game).
Similarly with widescreen support, there isn't really an issue with it, you can use any resolution by modifying configuration files but they just... do not bother to polish it up.
(note that any bug that can be fixed with normal mods isn't really an engine bug but a content bug - though some mods do work by hooking the engine executable)
It's easy to have no fixes, when it can't be fixed.
> small minority of rabid fans that keep on harping about their imagined deficiencies of the creation engine
You post comes across a bit aggressive and insulting.
Mind you, Minecraft's income comes from a lot of merchandise and spinoffs, whereas GTA is mainly from the game itself.
I was curious; RDR 2, also a Rockstar game, is the #14 best selling game of all time apparently; I didn't know it did that good. The other GTA games are also in the top 50.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_gam...
[1]: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-26-minecrafts-con...
Virtually every release Rockstar does sells millions. And from my point of view their games are fun too.
I wouldn't be so sure. Sure, they are not GTA or CoD, but Prey, Dishonored or Doom have all sold rather good.
