This one came out of nowhere – ZeniMax, the parent company of Fallout 3 and Oblivion developer Bethesda, has just announced its acquisition of id Software (best known for the Doom and Quake franchises). According to a report at Gamasutra, Bethesda will publish all of id’s currently unsigned projects (EA already has the upcoming Rage), and the move is being seen as the company really stepping up it’s publishing side.
John Carmack, id’s founder, had the usual rosy things to say:
“We will now be able to grow and extend all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward looking research to be done in the service of all of them. We will be bigger and stronger, as we recruit the best talent to help us build the landmark games of the future. As trite as it may be for me to say that I am extremely pleased and excited about this deal, I am.”
All jokes about a massive Quake RPG aside (and ok, that might be incredibly cool), I’m not sure how I feel about this one. On one hand, Bethesda is a great studio, and seeing it spread its proverbial wings on the publishing side is very cool. Plus, id has a rich history and a strong reputation. On the other, I always feel a twinge of sadness when an independent developer gets picked up, since it means that its becoming increasingly tougher to make it out there.
Read [Gamasutra]
great for bethesda, and everyone else as well. Besthesda is a company that is great at making games, and when they make a game sequel they are carefull to preserve the history of the previous games. i am sure they will do justice to any games they make with a previous ID company name on them, and yea, another RPG game mixed with FPS would be great, imagine with todays graphics what some of teh grotesque enemies would look like. very sweet…who knows what bethesda will do, only time will tell, either way i am looking forward to it.