Month: March 2021

Enlarge (credit: Simon Stacpoole | Offside | Getty Images)

The heads of the Chinese and Russian space agencies signed an agreement on Tuesday to work together to build a "scientific" station on the Moon.

Under terms of a memorandum of understanding, the two countries will cooperate on creation of an "International Lunar Science Station" and plan to invite other countries to participate. The agreement was signed by Zhang Kejian, director of the China National Space Administration, and Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Russia's space corporation, Roscosmos. The agreement was announced by Roscosmos.

Details about the project were fairly sparse, specifying only that the countries would work together to create research facilities on the surface and/or in orbit around the Moon. The goal was both to establish long-term, uncrewed facilities on the Moon as well as to build up the capabilities for a human presence there.

Enlarge / Bethesda's logo as carried by the publisher's growing roster of mascots. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

Bethesda Softworks and its parent company Zenimax Media are now officially a part of Microsoft, less than six months after the $7.5 billion proposed acquisition was announced. That means plans for "some new [Bethesda] titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players," Microsoft announced this morning.

It's still unclear how many Bethesda games will be exclusive to Microsoft's platforms going forward, or if those titles will come from the studio's well-established franchises such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, Wolfenstein, Dishonored, Prey, and the The Evil Within. But Microsoft says additional current Bethesda Softworks games will be coming to Xbox Game Pass later this week, joining current subscription offerings including Skyrim, The Elder Scrolls Online, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Dishonored 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 76.

Reading the tea leaves

In recent months, Microsoft had offered some broad hints that Bethesda would still continue to publish games on competing platforms from Sony and Nintendo (as Microsoft-owned Mojang continues to do with the Minecraft franchise). Microsoft CFO Tim Stuart said in November that he expected Bethesda games would launch "first or better or best" on Microsoft's own gaming platforms, and that the company doesn't "have intentions of just pulling all of Bethesda content out of Sony or Nintendo or otherwise."