Too late... a company that has the gall to release broken and/or blatantly inferior/unoptimized versions of a supposedly cross-platform product (PS3 version of Skyrim, anyone?) has already proven a lack of consideration for fans and Bethesda, while not doing a complete DA II type turn-around, aren't exactly refining their RPG formula so much as gradually cutting away parts of it and focusing more on the action and dungeon-diving (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, improving on core elements... but not exactly thrilling while their cutting away other core elements at the same time... don't even really have much in the way of factions anymore nor even a basic reputation/disposition system).

I don't see much similarity between Bioware in 2007 and Bethesda now. Bioware was a fully independent developer looking to partner with another independent developer, and they agreed to join EA. While Bethesda Game Studios is effectively independent it's connected to a publisher and part of a family of developers under Zenimax Media.

A Zenimax merger, similar to the Vivendi-Activision merger, seems more possible. However Vivendi was a huge publicly traded conglomerate looking to bolster it's games division when it turned its eyes towards Activision. Zenimax Media is a private company that houses a family of developement studios and a moderately sized international publisher. Unless the board decides to call it quits there doesn't seem to be any advantage to being bought out. (And if the members of the board were interested in a large public company they could have invested in such, instead they decided to found a smaller private one.)

I'll also point out that while EA and Vivendi/Activision are huge publishers they hardly have a duopoloy in the industry. Take-Two and Ubisoft are powerful players; Atari and THQ remain influential, although they are smaller; there are a host of major Japanese game publishers (Square-Enix-Edios, Capcom, Konami, Namco Bandai); and of course the big three console manufacturers. Valve has also shown its a force to be reckoned with, although as a publisher they do stick to the Valve family of studios. And lately Bethesda Softworks has become a major player, with publishing offices in Europe and Asia, and a host of high profile games both inside and outside the Zenimax family. Bethesda/Zenimax isn't as large as Take-Two or EA, but they have enough presence to keep themselves independent if they want.

I just don't see any concern that Zenimax is going to sell off BGS or merge with a larger player. Although if they did merge I suspect it would be with a publisher like Take Two in order to better compete against EA and Vivendi, rather than joining one of the latter. However I still contend that Zenimax Media wants to remain private, and if it ever goes public it will be on its own terms.

Because Zenimax is smart and is not any time soon going to be violated by EA or Activi$ion.

Always amazes me that people bash an MMO right out of the gate when it takes a minimum of 6 months to fine tune everything.

Getting beyond that I think Bethesda's retainer is nearly as big as EA and it would take some SERIOUS $$$ to take them over. Another problem is EA trying to take over ZeniMax might be frowned upon by the trade commission people or whoever oversees company mergers. It might be seen as an attempt at monopolization thus causing the deal to be canceled even if both companies agreed to it.

A company running for profit? Perish the thought! They'll be using division of labour next!

If it makes you feel any better, the 360 version is also abyslam. The lag problem isnt exclusive to p23, many quests are just broken.

Its a poor product overall, and I havent checked the recent patch, but I think 2 months on. Its a tad late.

Well, I thought Dragon Age 2 was better than Morrowind.
Even though I have been playing RPGS all my life.

Now I guess I'm to be considered a dumb, 12 year old kid who plays on a dumbed down console.

Don't forget not worthy of holding any other opinions on RPGs.

No smiley.

What's wrong with SWTOR?

Oh, right, you wanted a singleplayer game. Never mind it's probably the best MMO I've ever played, and I've played several.


Everyone is considered a dumb 12 year old who plays on a dumbed down console here.

And yet Skyrim is still the most stable game Bethesda has ever released. Pre-patched Oblivion was worse off than Pre-patched Skyrim. Heck, Daggerfall to this day has game breaking bugs. Bethesda has done a swift job at attacking bugs in Skyrim. In 3 months we've seen 4 patches.

I know, but the PS3 does get the brunt of the negative effects including an inherently inferior framerate before the memory-related "lag" issue (just check any lensoftruth or DigitalFoundry comparison... the PS3 version averages, overall, somewhere in the low to mid 20s on fps, which I swear to you from personal experience trying to play through all different types of regions and cells in Skyrim, and even if the 360 version has screen-tearing, I consider that much better than this choppy slugfest I have), inferior graphical fidelity, and more severely common memory complications and the like. In any case, Bethesda simply don't seem to be too good on quality control or even programming in general and all platforms are suffering the broken quests and scripting errors, usually, as well as issues stemming from a base lack of quality coding, but at least the 360 version can maintain a relatively stable framerate that for the most part stays at or near 30.

In any case, Bethesda's PR department is also quite poor, I'd say, and I don't trust them with technical matters, in general... I just fear them greater when they clearly designate a sole development platform and attempt to take the cheap route with hasty ports... of a game that, even on the platform it was designed for, has issues. I respect Bethesda's artists, I respect the sound designers, and I respect the world-builders, but I don't know if I should blame the coders, the publishers, and/or the PR department, but this company really isn't that great with fan relations or care, as far I can see, regardless of platform... it's just worse for some platforms than others. They've got the money to get the job done properly (Anybody see Skyrim's sales? They're a big-shot mainstream company with a pretty wide fanbase, now), but they just don't seem to care enough to do it and then they hide beneath a veil of silence and complete distance/lies (not hype with a bit of fabrication, just purely fraudulent lies and deception in the case of Skyrim's technical quality... a breach of implied warranty, I'd argue, as well). I'm not sure what screams selling out further than having a best-selling game... and still screwing over your fanbase on base performance optimization.

And two of those made Skyrim even worse or maybe it was just one I do have a terrible memory.

The things I've heard... I can't believe anyone would willingly work there. It's like a Chinese sweatshop. Only, American, and with ACs.

I don't really see how Bioware has "sold out" and Bethesda hasn't. Both are attempting to appeal to mainstream audiences. Really the only difference I see is that Bioware, at least with ME3, is trying to allow co-existence of action and RPG elements, whereas Bethesda is submersing the RPG elements of the game so the game is more friendly to new players. Even Blizzard is doing this with Diablo 3, hiding tool-tips and eliminating large amounts of vital information from even the "Advanced Tool-tips".

No, SW: TOR was ruined for me because Lucas Arts allowed EA to put their grubby little hands all over it. I would've bought and played the game had it not been for the giant EA emblem on it.

Because Beth is a fat lady and EA and Activision don't have the stomach to swallow her, or the cutlery.

While I don't see much similarity either, Bioware was not an independent developer back in 2007 and they never agreed to join EA. Since 2005 Bioware and Pandemic Studios were owned by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VG_Holding_Corp., which EA bought. And seeing EA after the purchase shut down Pandemic Studios, it seems like Bioware was their goal all along.

Yes and everybody know it, they probably wanted to keep the code as similar as possible as it makes development and testing easier, The PS3 players are very happy about this decision having around 50MB less main memory than the xbox.

Because they are owned by Zenimax.
Zenimax wouldn't sell Bethesda to Activision, all the good companies bought by Activision has gone bankrupt.