| Ryuu96 said: Some highlights and a few comments from the administrative complaint from the FTC: |
So much nonsense in that FTC statement. But I particularly take issue with this section:
-Claiming there are only 4 multiplat AAA game publishers; Activision-Blizzard, EA, Take- Two/2K, and Ubisoft. They are the 4 largest AAA publishers for sure, each able to release AAA games on a yearly basis, but that completely disregards the fact that numerous mid size publishers have studios that have are able to release multiple AAA games, just at a lower frequency than the big 4. Publishers like Square Enix, Capcom, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and Embracer Group have all shown the ability to release multiple AAA games each console generation. Numerous other publishers either own at least one AAA capable studio, or publish AAA games developed by an independent AAA studio.
The FTC is trying to treat the gaming market like the movie market or the book publishing market, where like 80% or more of each market's sales are held by a big 5. For movies that big 5 is Disney-Fox, Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, and NBC-Universal, which combined account for around 85% of all movie revenue. For book publishing the big 5 are Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Livre, and Macmillan, which I can't find exact marketshare data on but I'm pretty sure they control around 80% of book sales. The FTC has dealt with merger cases amongst the movie studios and book publishers in the past, allowing the merger of Disney and Fox, and the merger of Penguin Group and Random House, but later blocking the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They rightly blocked the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, a combined entity which would have controlled over 40% of the book market.
However, the gaming market is totally different from either the movie market or the book publishing market. The so called big 4 they listed in their full report, is nothing like the big 5 in movies or books. The big 4 is actually more like the big 7, once you add in Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo. On top of that, the mid size game publishers and the small game publishers control higher percentages of the market than the mid size and small movie studios and book publishers do. So whereas the big 5 on movies and books each control like 80% of their respective markets, the big 4 AAA publishers FTC talks about here likely only account for around 38% of all game sales. Nintendo, Sony, and Xbox probably account for a combined 27% of game sales. The medium and small publishers combined likely account for the remaining 35% of all game sales.
So unlike the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger that the FTC rightfully blocked, which would have created a combined entity that controlled about 40% of book sales, the combined entity of Xbox + Zenimax + ABK would only control around 15-20% of all gaming software sales, and the FTC in the past has allowed mergers that created 20-25% marketshares, including Disney+Fox and Penguin Group + Random House. On a hardware level, acquiring ABK and Zenimax alone is likely still not enough to move out of 3rd place behind Nintendo and Sony.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 09 December 2022
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