Doctor_MG said:
I think the most practical way to look at this is whether or not services like Netflix are their own market. Which I believe that the FTC does.
The issue I have is that western society (particularly America) continues to perpetuate huge growth for these gigantic corporations and it ends up affecting us in the end. Industry consolidation and oligopolistic markets have amplified over time. Beer, groceries, e-commerce, physical retail, music recording industry, TV/film, airlines, etc...we have seen this time and time again. The problem with the way we have been regulating companies is we basically have to predict the future. This has had detrimental effects in the market, not from a business standpoint but a consumer one, as a result of oligopolies. There are a variety of studies which have shown this effect.
But we can't prove that MS will cause an issue in a relatively new market, so it will probably go through. If it happens that it does have a negative effect on the market, the decision can't simply be reversed. In addition, allowing MS to do this reinforces further consolidation by other companies. Maybe MS buys Activision, so Amazon buys EA (which they are looking to do), and Google buys Ubisoft. Does it sound like a snowball argument, absolutely, but we have historical precedent gathered from a huge amount of other markets to show that this thought process isn't unreasonable.
|
I think the best solution to the issues you describe thought would be to better equip regulators in case of actual antitrust. Mergers provide an opportunity to act in prevention and it is fine when issues raised cater to the highly probable scenarios and/or protect actual and current competition instead of hypothetical future ones. Absent of those regulators should not act as if there is no tool at their disposal to act in remediation would an issue arise either.
As for other entities reacting to a merger by trying to do one of their own, I have no issue with this possibility. Sure it is possible that as a result of some of those deals, some titles might become less available to me and or that some of the merged entity focus shifts to something I like less but the contrary is also quite possible, and mergers like these are a sign that potential huge investment and expansion are looming.
Last edited by EpicRandy - on 28 May 2023
