She is right on all points there. The FTC suit isn't grounded in reality, they are just making up non-existent definitions and facts in a sad attempt to justify their crusade against big tech, while ignoring the precedent established by earlier giant acquisitions they approved, such as Penguin-Random House and Disney-Fox, 2 acquisitions that created 20%+ marketshares in books and movies respectively (Disney-Fox in particular had 25.7% of the domestic movie box office marketshare in 2021, Xbox + Zenimax + ABK combined software marketshare is not over 20%, probably not even over 15%, as the gaming market is far less consolidated than the book or movie markets are, with over 30 game publishers out there and Xbox only owning 3 of the 30+ if this deal is approved). And of course Xbox is 3rd place in hardware as well, it is very difficult to make the case that allowing merger creates an Xbox monopoly.
It would be easier to make the case that allowing Sony to acquire ABK would create a monopoly, as Sony is 2nd place in hardware (1st place in the high performance console segment that the FTC made up), and the software marketshare of Sony Interactive Entertainment as a publisher I'm pretty sure already exceeds the software marketshare of Xbox + Zenimax combined. If it was Sony acquiring ABK, I could see at least some good reasons for the regulators to block the deal (though I still don't think it would create a true monopoly), but trying to make the case that allowing the 3rd place console maker in both hardware and software marketshare to acquire them would create a monopoly? That makes no sense to me, the acquisition of no single publisher currently is big enough to catapult Xbox from 3rd place into 1st place in both hardware and software marketshare. I just don't see the need for the regulators to fight this deal as hard as they seem set on fighting it, especially since they mainly seem to be concerned about CoD exclusivity and Xbox is willing to guarantee it will stay multiplat for 10 years.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 28 December 2022
