September 25, 2020 5:35 AM EDT
That was quite surprising and I also have mixed feelings about it.
In regards to the content and making of the games I think it will be pretty much the same as it would be before microsoft bought them with a few differences though. That being said I expect every game coming out from them to be heavily catered towards console even more so than before. Take Skyrim for example and its UI that is not a proper UI for PC inventory/magic menu etc in the future we might see more elements in the game that work better for console compared to PC (see Dark Souls controls for PC). Also some major "streamlining" (one of my most hated words..) and bad writing is something I expect and if we compare Skyrim's storylines to the previous ES games like Morrowind and Oblivion I don't think that the quality of writing is anywhere close to them (see College of Winterhold questline for example) due to the age of targeted audience will be much lower than it was before.
Now let's head to the important part, Modding. I strongly believe that they will implement creation clubs mumbo-jumbo, live services and all that since the release of the games and there will be a huge amount of micro-transactions for the games. In regards to free modding not sure if it will a positive or negative impact but in general I 'm always expecting the worst possible so that's that.
In general it's still too early to tell how it will go but I 'm certainly expecting for modding to be affected some way or the other because the potential of $ they could gain from mods is too big to pass up for them, seeing some sort of modpocalypse 2.0 in the future wouldn't be that surprising and I 'm expecting them to put their hand in the modding community some way or the other.
There is another thing though and that is the budget for the games might become bigger but with bigger budget there will be bigger expectations for income and that is not always good since some bad decisions could be made, who knows.
This post was edited by Duvain at September 25, 2020 5:35 AM EDT