Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda Softworks parent company Zenimax Media has officially gone through.
Following the news that the European Union had cleared Microsoft from their anti-competitor investigation, Bethesda has joined the Xbox Game Studios family.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced the news in an Xbox blog post, officially welcoming all eight studios under the Xbox umbrella. Spencer expressed a desire for Bethesda's strong collection of studios to help Xbox's plans to grow the Xbox ecosystem into the future.
What studios do Xbox now own?
"Now that everything is official, we can begin working together to deliver more great games to everyone," Spencer wrote. "At every step building toward this moment, I’ve been inspired and motivated by the creativity, insight, and community-first approach of the talented people at Bethesda. Our goal is to give these teams the best foundation for doing their greatest work and to learn from them as we continue to build Xbox into an inclusive platform for all players."
In the $7.5 billion deal, Microsoft now has access to some of gaming's most beloved studios. On top of Bethesda Game Studios, Microsoft now owns Doom developer id Software, Dishonored's Arkane Studios, Wolfenstein's MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Zenimax Online, Alpha Dog and Roundhouse Studios.
Will Bethesda games be exclusive to Xbox?
While it's been previously stated that Bethesda games will be exclusive to Xbox on a "case-by-case" basis, it has now been confirmed that some games will be exclusive in the future.
In the announcement post, Spencer revealed that not only should "gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games", but also that "some new titles in the future" will be Xbox and PC only.
Xbox will still honour previous exclusivity deals that were made before the acquisition. Tango Gameworks' Ghostwire Tokyo and Arkane's Deathloop will still be timed exclusives on PlayStation 5, but there's no telling which Bethesda games will come to that platform in the future.