I really hope Nintendo gets super pissed about how much the CMA is downplaying their insanely strong position and releases a statement!

I'm sorry, but that is absolute horse shit CMA. Xbox would have domination of every genre except sports if you allow the acquisition to proceed? Surely Sony was the competitor who claimed that. I would agree that Xbox would have a pretty strong #1 position in shooters and western RPG's in the wake of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition, but that is it. Look at all of the genres they are either weak in, or have plenty of other competitors in:

• Action-Adventure: Sony, Ubisoft, Take-Two, WB, and several others all release high selling action-adventure games, while Xbox is still quite weak in that genre (I think their bestselling action-adventure exclusive so far only sold like 3m copies) and will remain weak if this acquisition is allowed to happen as Activision-Blizzard doesn't specialize in Action-Adventure games (they only had the Prototype series which wasn't a big seller and has been dormant for a decade).
• Fighting- Xbox has absolutely nothing in fighting at the moment with Killer Instinct dead, while Sony has been hatting fighting exclusives and acquired Evo to push fighting game fans to buy a playstation instead of an Xbox
• Racing- The bestselling racing franchise remains Sony's Gran Turismo. Forza Horizon beats it in player count thanks to Gamepass, but as far as we know, Forza Horizon 5 has sold less copies than GT7 has so far in spite of FH5 releasing first. Meanwhile Need For Speed, Test Drive, The Crew, and several other smaller racing series are holding either Xbox or Sony back from having anything even resembling a monopoly in this genre.
• JRPG- Xbox has absolutely nothing in this genre currently, while Sony has hatted JRPG exclusives like FF7R, FF16, and Forspoken.
• Sports- Xbox has nothing in sports currently, while Sony has MLB and the rest belong to either EA or Take-Two/2K
• RTS- Xbox competes well in this category with games like Age of Empire and Halo Wars, but they are far from having a monopoly in this genre.
• 4X/turn based strategy- Xbox has nothing in this genre currently, though I believe the upcoming Ara: History Untold is 4X
• Family games- They have Minecraft and would gain Spyro and Crash Bandicoot from this acquisition, but Nintendo would remain the overall leader in family games even if they acquisition is allowed to proceed, as Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Splatoon, Pokemon, Kirby, and more when it comes to family games.
• Horror/Survival Horror- Xbox currently has nothing in this genre except the upcoming State of Decay 3 and Project Mara, neither of which is expected to be a particularly huge seller. They won't even be close to a monopoly in this genre.

I'm a little miffed on Nintendo's behalf, Lmao.

They just straight up dragged Nintendo, they aren't a real competitor, they compete with fitness apps and non-gaming apps, what the fuck?

They had to drag up a 2008 game to make their point and even then, what the fuck, Lol.

They have to conveniently ignore Nintendo to make half of their arguments make any sense, it's really suspicious.

Also, to my genre list, I forgot to add Puzzler, Family and MOBA.

Crazy stuff. It's basically complete stupidity about how Sony even increased the advantage against MS with their CoD deals and how MS would profit as well so that this is a big problem but that Sony had an already big market share even boosted by CoD deals seems fine and has to be protected lol.

If this CMA won't at least mention how Sony needs to stop these deals which helped them to get an unfair advantage I don't know what to say...

Also funny how Sony is like "we are nothing without CoD". You really need to talk your own studios and franchises so small just because you could lose a few percent market share? Damn...

Sony looking really pathetic right now. Like Ryuu swooning over @NobleTeam360 levels of sad

MS doesn't know or doesn't care.

My main account has been permanently transferred to US so I could download the 360 GwG titles that were banned in Germany (Gears for example) as the 360 was region locked. I'm constantly gifting myself games from my wife's account, which is a German account, when I'm cashing in my MS reward points. No VPN needed as I bought the game from the German Xbox store and redeemed the sent code in the German Xbox store. Therefore, the account region is irrelevant.

The only thing that is relevant is where the game was bought. If it was bought in the US, then anyone not from the US needs to use a US VPN (plenty of free ones available) to redeem it.

Tbh, I'm more embarrassed for CMA. Yeah, Sony is going to try everything to stop this deal, I expect that, in the process they will look hypocritical sometimes, lawyers are going to be lawyers and throw out every argument that they can but that doesn't mean that CMA have to give air to every single argument that Sony gives to them, and it feels like they are. 

It feels like CMA is just taking whatever Sony says at face value without doing any research, thinking far too much about how to protect the #1 company and not actually looking deeply at the market, it's very odd behaviour and completely different to the professionalism that Brazil showed.

The difference between CMA and Brazil is staggering. Brazil seriously did their research, shut down silly arguments, actually provided facts to counter them while CMA is running mostly on speculation, opinions and very few facts whilst having to ignore a massive competitor (Nintendo) just to make a bunch of their arguments make any sense which is insane.

I still think it will pass but I do think there's a good chance that CMA will not approve it first time around now. Hopefully EU and FTC approve it soon to put pressure on CMA and get this shit over with, Lol.