Bethesda end goal with acquisitions to "build internal development capacity," says Hines

Bethesda VP of marketing and PR Pete Hines has said that its recent acquisitions within the past couple of years was so it could beef up its "development capacity" internally.

The company's bought id Software, Arkane Studios - which houses ex-Deus Ex boss Harvey Smith - Shinji Mikami's Tango Gameworks and Machine Games, comprising mostly of ex-vets from Starbreeze.

It also entered into publishing relationships with inXile and Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Splash Damage for Brink and the upcoming Prey 2 with Human Head.

This is in addition to Bethesda Game Studios and ZeniMax Online Studios.

"The goal was to build up our internal development capacity," he told MCV in its latest issue.

"We look to find and work with studios that share a common development philosophy.

Sometimes that ends up in us doing a development deal like the one we are doing with Human Head [Prey 2], and sometimes that escalates and goes all the way to an acquisition like we have done with id, Arcane, Machine Games and Tango. It depends to the extent to which that partnership makes sense to take further.

"In terms of the studios we’ve acquired, they were all opportunities where both the developer and we felt like that becoming part of Bethesda as an internal studio made more sense in the long-term than operating as two separate things."

As for buying more studios, Hines says Bethesda will "continue to work" with developers whetever it means just publishing a game or buying them out.