Why Do People View the MS Acquisition of ABK as a "Good Thing?"

[EpicRandy]

LurkerJ said:

EpicRandy said:

If Sony added a day-one release to their subs for a similar pricing strategy as Game Pass, it would be a clear prosumer improvement in their value proposition and I'd subscribe to it, absolutely no question about it.

Same thing if Sony started to support PC adequately. That's where I play most of the time and it would be so nice to play Sony titles more frequently on there.  that would be another undeniable prosumer move.

The thing is Sony benefits from a long-time unchallenged dominant position and it shows to some extent, they have a way higher profit margin than Xbox has. And it all boils down to this, profit margin, if a company succeed in getting a higher profit margin then that means they are able to extract more from the same offering or extract the same amount from a lesser offering (in term of production cost), or both. In a place where competition is extremely healthy the ability for a company to do so is lessened and maybe even close to non-existent, and consumers win. In a place where one actor benefits from a dominant position, they can increase profit margin and consumers lose.

Both decisions to not support PC consistently or subs with day one title have not been taken for the sake of their consumer but for the sake of their own benefits because they can. Xbox started supporting both, again not for consumer sake, but because, in their case, they could not do otherwise as they found themselves in a position where they could not compete effectively with "traditional" console-focused methods and pricing strategy and so were forced to react or quit. 

What is your point? I am not sure what you're going on about. 

SONY is more consumer friendly to me and offers the best value service bar non, they also offer me more options, I don't want PSN essential to be killed off and be forced to pay for PSN extra like MS did with their essential tier.

MS slowly and deliberately killed off their most basic tier in an attempt to boost higher priced tier subscriptions, SONY hasn't followed suit in this anti-consumer practice despite their "dominant position". The suggestion that only SONY subscriptions need to be competitive or more consumer friendly is false, MS is deliberately offering less choices in terms of subscription tiers, MS subs options can and should be more consumer friendly too. 

The question is not whether you find their offering to be more consumer-friendly to you but whether they can improve and whether an increase in competition is likely to result in such.

Also which basic tier did Xbox kill exactly? Are you referring to the failed attempt to kill live gold annual pricing? If so then again you can view this exactly through the profit margin scope laid out earlier, MS attempted to have a higher profit margin, but competition did not place them in a position where they could succeed and they were forced, by public outcry, to keep the higher value proposition offering.