| EpicRandy said: The thing is monopoly was never an issue in this acquisition. MS will still only be 3rd place amongst publishers by revenue even after the transaction, making any claim about monopoly ludicrous from the start. Monopoly isn't defined by an emotional response to a change in the market or by gamers' partisan-fueled utopic should-be rules, it's defined by tangible effect and context on a market. That is why you saw the FTC making a joke of market definitions trying to paint MS as having substantially more share than the reality. A console market that excludes Nintendo (by the way if ever there's really a way for MS to merge with Nintendo, you can thank FTC for defining them as in a different market making any merger attempts an easy vertical merger one instead of a way stricter horizontal one), a badly defined cloud market. It's not that the FTC were clowns making a weak case using bad arguments when good was available, the FTC were clowns fighting a weak case that had no possible good arguments to begin with. And they knew it was the case that's why their initial strategy was to delay until MS/ABK could not sustain their agreement rather than fight in court. And it's not like the FTC was the only one to talk here either, dozens of market authorities have allowed the transaction all over the world, and a lawsuit initiated by gamers and financed by Sony did not yield any result either. Even Sony's own internal communication shows this transaction was not anti-competitive or monopolistic. |
I don't remember the full details tbh, but I'm pretty sure the FTC was arguing against established IPs going exclusive to Microsoft like Call of Duty. CMA was arguing about the cloud service being a monopoly, and I'll add that Windows is over 95% of operating system on gaming PCs. Isn't that monopoly?
-As a practical matter, a market share of greater than fifty percent has been necessary for courts to find the existence of monopoly power
If big companies like Microsoft can acquire huge third parties like Activision Blizzard and make them exclusive, then how are smaller companies supposed to compete directly? This doesn't create competition.
- Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usually smaller, businesses or consumers.
Obviously market authorities from other countries don't care cuz Activision Blizzard and consoles are only big in certain countries. They don't see the impact.
