I haven't ever heard of ZeniMax, Bethesdas "Parent" company, can anybody give me examples of what games they've made.
Also, the rumors that Bethesda is going to make a TES MMO are false, ZeniMax is making an MMO, whether it is TES or not is beyond me.

Zenimax doesn't make games, they publish them.

When did anyone say that Bethesda was making a TES MMO? It's always been Zenimax Online Studios :huh:

As shown http://www.zenimax.com/profile.htm, Zenimax is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks (publishing) and developers Bethesda Game Studios, Vir2L, Zenimax Online, id and Arkane.

We don't know what game Zenimax Online is developing, but we can make an educated guess.

Zenimax owns the following major IPs:

Doom
Quake
The Elder Scrolls
Fallout 3
Wolfenstein
Rage
Arx Fatalis
Dark Messiah (I think they own that since they bought Arkane)

I think we can safely eliminate the ID stuff, Doom, Quake and RAGE. So that leaves TES, Fallout and the stuff Arkane has developed. No one really know what Arkane is doing right now but rumours say that they are working with Bethesda on TES5,

Zenimax's biggest IPs are obviously TES and Fallout. Fallout Online is currently in development by Interplay (for now, the Zenimax lawyers are sharpening their blades )

That leaves The Elder Scrolls. Unless Zenimax Online is working on a brand new IP, which is possible, but unlikely.

It seems pretty logical to me that Zenimax Online is working on an MMO set in the Elder Scrolls universe.

Best MMO speculation post i have read so far :goodjob:

Interesting. But do you mean Skyrim or a spin-off?

Personally I would rather see Arkane do another Arx Fatalis. :happy:

I am sure this is a Typo, Buuuuuuuuuut, you do know that Oblivion came out 4 years ago? :wink_smile:

This is the first I ever herd of a non Bethesda company working on a TES game. Where did you hear or read this from?

Skyrim I think

and honestly I'd be more interested in a new Dark Messiah game, that game had huge potential, the short ( and silly ) storyline was the bottleneck there. <_<

maybe that's just because I haven't played Arx Fatalis


It was a typo

or maybe I did it subconsciously, I never liked Oblivion much ( <3 Morrowind ) so I tend to forget it exists

From the ZeniMax http://www.zenimax.com/news_pressrelease08.12.10.htm (when ZeniMax acquired Arkane):



Skyrim hadn't been announced when this was released :shrug:

Maybe I was too quick to jump the gun here because now I notice that it says that they are working with Bethesda Softworks, the publishers of Skyrim. Bethesda Game Studios is developing it.

For those who are confused; Bethesda Softworks != Bethesda Game Studios. One is a publisher, the other one is a developer.

Todd Howard leads the Bethesda Game Studios team working on Skyrim. Bethesda Softworks will publish it.

Zenimax is what I would like to call the person on top and then it branches downward from their towards stuff like Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios. Also Zenimax usually keeps their mouths shut and allows Softworks and Game studios to do most of the talking which is a good thing when compared to EA/Bioware, Activision/whatever Developer it buys out, etc.

Zenimax is a company created by the founder of Bethesda softworks to act as a "shell" company for the management of assets, intellectual property, etc. Bethesda softworks, was split into Bethesda softworks, a publishing company, and Bethesda game studios, a development company. Bethesda softworks has moved to become a full-fledged publishing house capable of publishing games without support from another company like 2k games, while Zenimax works on acquiring more Intellectual property and development companies.

The reason you haven't heard of them is that they aren't a brand, like most companies.

For exemple, Bethesda is a brand, so the name is publicized and marketed in a way that you recognize it and it makes you want to buy a game it's attached to.

Ever heard of Fujisankei Communications International? Well, they published Ultima 1 to 7, but the brand for those games wasn't Fujisankei, instead the maker of the game himself, Lord British, was the brand used to sell you those games.

If they wanted to invest in enough marketing, Zenimax could become a well known brand attached to their games, but they instead mostly use Bethesda.

As mentioned, Zenimax is more or less just a "holdings company." They themselves have produced nothing; all of the production and publishing is done by one of their subsidiaries. Bethesda Softworks was the first: later, gamesas was split to create Bethesda Game Studios as a distinct entity from Softworks, with BGS being 100% a developer and Softworks 100% a publisher. This was brought on, I believe, by the increasing number of titles that gamesas was publishing.

As time's gone on, the number of game developers has increased: Vir2L was created to handle the "non-flagship" platforms, specifically things like mobile devices, with their first major releases being the first three Elder Scrolls Travels games. Later came Vir2L Online, which, I BELIEVE, is what was re-named as "Zenimax Online." (they either did that, or disolved Vir2L Online and created ZO at about the same time) Later has come a number of acquisitions: first iD, then Arkane, and along the way and still a number of lower-visibility ones, such as Tango and MachineGames, companies founded by developers that'd worked on Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Riddike, and other series.

That's SLIGHTLY inaccurate: FCI (specifically, their subsidiary Pony Canon) was responsible for the console ports of the games. (and the Home PC versions that were Japan-only) The original PC versions were, indeed, published by OSI themselves. So anyone that played the original PC games would never have heard of FCI because FCI didn't touch those.

You mean 5 years ago? :wink_smile:

I couldn't resist.

Didn't Zenimax make some old low budget PC racing games?

I swear i have a few.

Zenimax has never made anything. Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax have published a few racing games developed by Bethesda, but there are also some racing games they've published that Bethesda didn't develop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bethesda_Softworks_games to see what category the games you have fall into.

Because you don't read the back of the box?

Pete Hines said a couple weeks ago that Arkane has not been involved with Skyrim at all and they are working full time on their own project.