The RetroBeat: Can Microsoft save Quake?

With Microsoft’s $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda, everyone is buzzing about how the Xbox brand now owns huge franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Doom. But I’m just sitting over here thinking about Quake.

Quake is one of the most important first-person shooter franchises ever. It’s from Id Software, the same studio that created FPS heavyweights like Wolfenstein and Doom. While these franchises made the genre popular, 1996’s Quake is a pioneer in the 3D gaming realm. What Super Mario 64 did for platformers (hey, it also came out in 1996), Quake did for shooters. And then Quake III: Arena is an innovator for multiplayer, daring to forsake a single player campaign entirely back in 1999. At the time, that was a bold move.