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

[Shadow1980]

I can see plenty of merit to the various pros and cons of the MS-ABK merger.

I can definitely see the merit in arguments that a big pro of this merger is that it would potentially keep the console market competitive. Xbox is running well behind PlayStation and desperately needs something to help narrow the gap. Better supply of the Series X ain't it (though it'd help). While Call of Duty won't be Xbox-exclusive anytime soon, I could definitely see some fence-sitters who haven't gone current-gen yet being persuaded by the idea of the series being on Game Pass, new entries being released on it day one. We arguably need Xbox around as they're really the only real competition PlayStation has. Consoles are closed platforms, and the market is already an oligopoly, with only three companies in play anymore. It could get a lot worse if it were to become a duopoly where the remaining two players have fundamentally different offerings with little overlap. If this deal keeps Xbox in play, then I could see the merit in it.

As for the cons, I really, really, really don't like the idea of corporate mergers in general, or anything else that results in more and more economic power being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.Whatever benefits we've had, whatever great content has come as the result of mergers between entertainment companies, there's always going to be something bad to come out of these things. Somebody is going to get stiffed in some way at some point, and that somebody is usually us, not the shareholders. I can also definitely agree with concerns that this will further normalize industry consolidation.

None of these companies are our friends. They're in it for the money, full stop. MS, Sony, and Nintendo have all been guilty of doing a lot of underhanded, anti-competitive bullshit over the decades, from hyper-restrictive licensing agreements (see Nintendo in the 8-bit days) to buying out smaller companies (most of Sony's first-party portfolio is acquired studios) to the unnecessary money-hatting for exclusivity deals (too many to count).

I would prefer to live in a world where we didn't have massive corporations devouring each other left and right (or massive corporations at all), but as mergers go, this one isn't somehow uniquely abhorrent. Despite the massive dollar value attached to it, it's arguably punching well below its weight in terms of impact on the console space. Call of Duty is by far the biggest and most important part of this deal when it comes to console gaming, and while all new entries after this deal is finalized will almost certainly be on Game Pass day one, the series won't even be an Xbox console exclusive for quite some time. MS's recent acquisitions could potentially put Xbox back in the lead in North America (where it was fairly close until recently), but there is nothing Earth-shaking in this deal in regards to consoles. Europe will remain PlayStation Country and Japan will continue to largely ignore Xbox.

We can argue about the morality of this merger or mergers & acquisitions in general, but from a legal standpoint, there really isn't a good argument to be made against it under our current system. I mean, we do live in a world where in just the past couple of years both the WB—Discovery merger and Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter were both allowed, with far worse outcomes for customers and society at large than what would happen if CoD was on Game Pass.