By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
EpicRandy on 12 July 2023
Edit Thread
BraLoD said:
EpicRandy said:

But then your position isn't on the ABK transaction and its impact on relevant markets but on a political position against the merger in general. It's a perfectly fine position, but you'd have to explain why should MS be the one entity to be reviewed under this different standard.

On the matter of whether MS will take away relevant ABK Ips, MS has more than enough done to ensure it was not the case, they never planned to make CoD exclusive even Jim Ryan never believe it was to be the case. So I think we can fairly put that concern to rest.

The scale of this buyout is completely unprecendent and involves the biggest multiplatform game franchise there is.

The only thing on par with that would be Nintendo or Sony buying Take Two and securing GTA franchise as their own, which would definitely also cause a major response as a result.

Even the smaller but still big buyouts like Bethesda or Bungie are nothing compared to what is happening now. Either way, that doesn't mean those are good either, just not as relevant as what is going on now.

The scale of the transaction doesn't matter in the end, only the impact on relevant markets, the scale will only act to increase scrutiny over the transaction as we've seen extensively here and all attempted SLC have been judged insufficient or not credible enough to amount to anything to date.

The thing is even though some franchises are as big as CoD, they are nothing compared to the size of the overall console gaming market. Furthermore when you consider a big part of CoD value is now tied to mobile gaming, in ABK deposition: "the bulk of players are playing on phones,” followed by PC (25%), PlayStation (15-16%), and Xbox (7-8%)". They are also not guaranteed to be as successful or as popular as they are now forever.