The big Microsoft leak earlier this week revealed a lot of Xbox’s plans over the past few years as well for the future. One of the things that was brought up is in regards to Xbox’s acquisitions in the last few years. One of the biggest companies acquired was ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda. Xbox was also interested in acquiring Nintendo but it wasn’t the only publisher they were looking into. In leaked email dating back to 2020 focused on acquisitions, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer noted that the company was interested in acquiring Warner Bros. Games, the publisher behind the massively popular Batman Arkham series and most recently, Hogwarts Legacy.
What’s interesting about this is that Xbox was in active discussions to buy Warner Bros. Games alongside ZeniMax Media at the same time. In the email, Spencer went into detail about some of the talks they had at the time. “Confidentially, we have two fairly active M&A discussions in Gaming right now. Warner Brothers Interactive and ZeniMax. I took ZeniMax to the BoD last week and prior to the BoD discussion I asked Amy and Satya if they wanted me to slow either or both of these given the TikTok discussions and they both emphatically told me “no.” They are fine doing all 3 of these if the deals makes sense. I won’t say WB or Zeni is Nintendo but both are for sale and gettable by us if things align.”
However, Spencer noted that acquiring Warner Bros. Games would be a challenge. “Biggest obstacle in WB is IP ownership, we wouldn’t own any of the IP which hurts long-term flexibility and the only obstacle on Zeni is valuation expectations of founders,” Spencer said. “But I think it’s likely one or both of these happen which will help us continue to double down on our Gaming relevance. To give a sense of scale, ZeniMax is about the size of our current first-party studios org, so that would be doubling our content asset. Downside is it’s more core, less broad, not mobile, more North American/European, etc.”
In September 2020, ZeniMax Media joined Microsoft for $7.5 billion. By March 2021, the acquisition became official.