We know that talk of acquisitions has never been more fierce, but this latest rumour is just a little bit too silly for our liking. A Reddit poster, who goes by the name Zenimaxinsider of all things, claims that Sony is in talks to buy The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim publisher ZeniMax Media along with every other developer it owns. That includes the likes of Tango Gameworks, Machine Games, and Arkane Studios -- but of course, this is all a load of nonsense.
The "insider" suggests that the deal will be completed by the start of February 2020, but upcoming RPG Starfield has been cancelled in the process. Canned three months ago, Bethesda is said to be now all hands on deck with The Elder Scrolls VI and remakes of unspecified Fallout titles which are on their way next year. The poster claims they "can give more details soon." They won't, however, because this is completely nonsensical.
The Japanese giant is probably going to announce some studio acquisitions sooner rather than later as the PlayStation 5 reveal inches closer, but ZeniMax Media most certainly won't be one of them. For a more realistic look at the studios Sony could realistically buy, head on through the link. Remember that it has already added Marvel's Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games to the line-up of PlayStation first-party studios.
[source reddit.com]
Comments 39
Yeah, no. There's no reason for sony to buy zenimax, like, at all.
Well i've read crazier claims like SONY/Microsoft buying Take-Two Interactive, or even better... Microsot buying out Sony.
it is nonsense, but i would like it. Arkane studios is my th most favoutite studio ever
Ah, the safest kind of rumour to claim true, as it's a pending deal so when the (non-existent) negotiation talks "collapse at the last minute" and never materialise, this person can still attempt to preserve their paper-thin legitimacy.
Of course, when it actually does happen, I'll owe them an apology.
Fallout 77 exclusive to PS5
ZeniMax also owns id who make Doom and Quake. So it would mean some massive games being PlayStation exclusives if this was real.
The rumour is wild and I personally don’t think it would actually be good for the gaming industry as a whole of it were true.
Games from Bethesda and id being on Switch, Xbox and PC as we as on PlayStation doesn’t seem a bad thing.
There's another rumour Sony are planning to take over EA and Ubisoft, first.
This is a big old nope.
While the majority of this is likely 100% trash, I have heard murmurs of a FO:NV remake, using a new engine that FO games will use going forward. Since FO:NV wasn’t a Bethesda game, the rumor extends to Zenimax acquiring Obsidian. We’ll see what happens!
Good, we might get a decent Fallout game again
This is a rumour that I don't know if I want it to be truth or fake. I mean, Sony owning Fallout, Doom, TES, Dishonored, Wolfenstein and many other sounds crazy and awesome for PlayStation fans, but other rumours suggest that Google and Microsoft are also wanting to buy ZeniMax and everyone knows Sony doesn't stand a chance between those two (I don't know how the thing works when companies compete to buy other companies anyways) and that means no releases for those franchises on PlayStation. I would prefer a company like EA or Activision to buy ZeniMax tbh.
Bethesda is far too PC focused, and unpolished, to give any credibility to this. While I love Bethesda games, the amount of money they would have to shell out would be astronomical and doesn’t seem to fit Sony’s first party direction.
This is a nope, but I would be laughing if this did actually happen. Hopefully it would mean the games from Bethesda would be a lot less buggy... nah, Bethesda never changes.
Not a chance that this rumour has any credibility. But after all the years of Playstation bashing by Todd Howard & Pete Hines on issues like crossplay & not allowing open slather on mods (with external assets), could you imagine their reactions?!
You could see Google forking out $$ for such a swag of studios, but it wouldn't be a cheap buy.
"We have decided to post a 'leak' which we believe to be untrue and complete nonsense. Apparently, this qualifies as news."
There would be no console 'war' to speak of if something like that happened. Could you imagine ES6 with the polish of Sony WWS lol. The real question is what would the damage$$$ be on an acquisition of that size? Or has Zenimax and Bethesda taken a substantial hit in net worth with their abysmal offerings lately?
@Nickolaidas Our stance on this is that often these rumours gain a lot of traction in gaming communities so we wouldn't be filling our role if we didn't try to clear them up.
We could ignore it, but if a lot of people are talking about a particular thing then it's not wrong for us to share our view on it.
Not a fan of these types of news articles that the source is a reddit poster.
@glassmusic Microsoft beat them to that
Obviously this is bs. But if Sony were able to afford to spend stupid money on one outfit, I'd prefer it to be Take 2 like that, also obviously false, rumor several months ago suggested.
@get2sammyb Fair enough, I guess. You should also check out the rumor that Void Bastards is coming to PS4. A true gem of a game, it's nice to hear that it's possibly coming to the Sony ecosystem. EDIT: You already did. Kudos!
@glassmusic they have confirmed (unless recently scraped internally) to be using the ANCIENT Creation Engine (highly modified lol) for ES6 and Starfield which is a total bummer. Decima for the win!!
@The_Great_WmR They unfortunately did.
Happy new year people, let the year of crazy rumours begin again.
This is like Microsoft buying From Software. Never gonna happen. At all.
Is it the same guy who said Sony is buying R*?
Haha
yeah, but admit it, secretly you're thinking how much more awesome would elder scrolls 6 be using guerrilla's decima engine. .
If Sony secures a remastered Fallout 76 as a launch title for the PS5 they will win the entire generation hands down, Nintendo and Microsoft might have to drop out.
This is as real as Sony buying Rockstar, which by the way the claim was so preposterous that even Sony came out and said "No truth in these claims".
I could see this happening Sony like to get into FPS genre and online games. They will be getting well establish franchises, successful sales and big fan base. I don’t see Sony taking chances on smaller studios and fail. Having Skyrim and fallout as an exclusive will guarantee Sony a success for next gen
meh dont act as if zenimax is so big to be bought,
the only big hit they got was skyrim,
other games they made this couple of year were flop
Lol the PC Master race would go absolute bonkers and revolt if this is true. But this would make an extremely interesting purchase I must say, as western focused FPS shooters and RPGs such as Skyrim is what's lacking when it comes to PlayStation's first party line up. Since MS have Obsidian and Inxile, I wouldn't mind Sony looking into something like Larian Studio as well.
if it's non nonsensical rumors, why even bother writing article for that
Bethesda hasn't enjoyed many successes over the last 2 or 3 years, so I personally wouldn't completely rule it out.
@glassmusic Microsoft bought Obsidian last year so that seems very unlikely
Update: the post was cancelled.
poststhatagedbadly.jpg
Well it wasn't Sony that did it...
Microsoft, baby!
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