If you're not following the news, it seems the FTC is suing MS to block the acquisition. Naturally, opinions on this have been divided, and some are coming up with theories to explain why this happened; when in reality, the FTC is just doing their job for once and not letting the biggest merger in tech history to take place without proper examination. I think we all should be unsettled if this takes place without a deeper investigation.
The fact is, we got used to regulatory bodies failing us and allowing corporate consolidation to take place without scrutiny, but this doesn't make this particular buyout acceptable even WHEN it's approved.
Some are refusing to see how buying the biggest publishers in the world and owning the biggest IPs in gaming (from Bethesda and Activision) can be problematic. When even Microsoft themselves have admitted that it can be anti-competitive, they haven't said it in words, but they showed it with their actions, this is evident by the "concessions" they offered and continue to offer, if MS totally believed what they're doing is NOT anti-competitive, we wouldn't have seen concessions at all.
Some tend to ignore that we didn't even think that COD would make it into PS consoles and PSN online services for 10 years and on day one of the release date until literally yesterday. This is a big concession and can be viewed as an admission that the buyout can be weaponised. Not to mention, it's only too convenient for MS to pretend this is just about COD. What about Candy crush? Diablo? WoW? The elder scrolls? and other huge IPs that will be under their belt just because they could afford it.
As a leftist, I am against corporate consolidation. I think most level-headed gamers think it's bad until MS decided to buy studios left and right and console wars entered the equation.
Obviously, the usual counter points since the acquisition has been announced are still being used to justify this have been the same. SONY money hatted timed exclusive, SONY paid third parties to prevent games from making it to the xbox platforms. SONY is doing this and that..... yeah, and I see your point on how this is wrong and shouldn't continue to happen, however, the question becomes;
- how is the solution to objectionable practices is an even bigger objectionable practice?
and it doesn't stop at this acquisition, we all know this, this is not some conspiracy theory, Microsoft has been vocal with their unhinged intents to buy even more publishers and that they would stop at nothing. How many studios they need to own before we go, erm, wait a second...
... let's discuss this (now that regulatory bodies have made the matter discussable, even though, I still think the merger is inevitable).
Last edited by LurkerJ - on 15 December 2022
