Microsoft is buying the company behind popular video games The Elder Scrolls, Doom, and Fallout.

The software giant said Monday that it is paying $7.5 billion for ZeniMax Media, the parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks.

Microsoft said it is buying Bethesda in part to beef up its Xbox Game Pass game subscription service, which it says has over 15 million subscribers.

Bethesda games, such as Starfield, which is currently in development, will launch on Xbox Game Pass the same day they launch on Xbox or computers, Microsoft said.

Microsoft has new consoles debuting on Nov. 10: the Xbox Series X and the stripped down Series S version. It will be competing against Sony's new PlayStation 5 console.

R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said the deal is part of a wider industry trend of consolidation. Microsoft already owns studios that make popular games including Minecraft and the Halo franchise.

"We believe the deal checks a lot of boxes for Microsoft, such as strengthening the Xbox/Games division product portfolio as competition increases, boosting the profile of Xbox subscription services, and providing more content for the company’s cloud gaming initiatives," he wrote in an investor note.

Microsoft Corp., which is based in Redmond, Washington, expects the deal to close in the second half of fiscal 2021.

Share:
More In Business
Klarna shares jump 30% on Wall Street debut
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Musk loses crown as world’s richest to software giant Larry Ellison
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
Load More