What are your thoughts about this? My family hasn't been too impressed with the way Microsoft has handled Minecraft since buying it, so I'm not sure if we should be concerned about the Elder Scrolls franchise.
Pales in comparison to how they've handled Rare for the last 18 years -_-
This is also the company that decided they didn't want RTS games anymore, so they shut Ensemble & then later made RTS games anyway. Or shut down Lionhead because they didn't want Fable but now they do again, so they had to get another studio to make it. Like I know a lot of the bullshit was due to old management that's not there anymore but Don Mattrick left & was replaced with the current guy a whole 3 years before the Lionhead closure.
MS is sitting on a plethora of IP they haven't done much with in ages. As I've seen others online point out, in an age where Crash & Spyro are getting high profile remasters that led to a highly rated new Crash sequel that just came out, MS is pretty much sitting on a Banjo remaster.
There're some redundancies with the various IP they've acquired among the many studios they've bought. InXile was founded by the former head of Interplay, the company that original created the Fallout series. Their Wasteland series was basically a substitution for the older style Fallout games (yes, I know the 1st Wasteland predates Fallout 1, but it definitely feels like Wasteland 2 was driven more by being a Fallout spiritual successor than sequel to the original). Obsidian were the devs of New Vegas & Outer Worlds was basically their spiritual successor. Does Wasteland & Outer Worlds continue on or will these teams make their own Fallout spin-offs that'll no doubt make more money? Does MS view Outer Worlds & Wasteland as redundant IPs they don't need anymore now that they have Fallout & the upcoming Starfield?
Phil Spencer once said that they didn't want a new Perfect Dark because they already had Halo & Gears for shooter franchises but now they're adding Doom & Wolfenstein? Will they decide that Doom & Halo are redundant & Doom goes the way of Project Gotham Racing?
Like, if MS
really wanted to expand their 1st party so badly, they could've created more new studios, have them create new IP that's differs more from their current offerings. Or they revive more of the older IPs like Mech Assault or something. Instead, they just buy who they like to get games they were gonna be releasing on XBox anyway but now those same games probably won't be coming to PS5 now. A netloss for the industry rather than a netgain.