I doubt it is as simple. It is basically impossible at this point to gain a monopoly or even close in gaming.

In movies for instance you need a team to make a somewhat good movie and more importantly: it will be very difficult to distribute it in a way that you get a lot of viewers and money.

In gaming though you have lots of indies. It has never been easier to create a game - even as a single person. More importantly: it never has been easier to get your game to the consumer and their money in return. On PC you have Steam, GOG, itch.io, EGS. And always the option to simply sell it on your own website. Mobile is more difficult, as Google and Apple hold a firm grip on their respective ecosystem, but that doesn't seem to hinder game releases. And even on console more and more indies are able to publish. If some company in some sort of wonder acquires every game studio in the world today, then tomorrow a thousand new ones will exist.

The most important and expensive part of this acquisition probably was King, but if MS would've only bought King from Activision, nobody on this forum would care. Although that probably makes the most money.

I'm quite excited to see how World of Warcraft can flourish once again without Bobby's claws being stuck into everything.

I don't like this...

I wonder if in like 6 months we will hear again "this won't be the last large acquisition by Microsoft".

Imagine (for fun) if it gets to a point where Sony and Nintendo are forced to collaborate...

In terms of the games I play this doesn't really change much, since I think I've bought a grand total of one Activision-Blizzard game in the last 15 years. However, for the industry as a whole this seems like a continuation of a very unhealthy direction, with a few companies on top controlling almost every developer and franchise around.

Read my post again about me still saving money if they raised monthly fees to $100.

I'm not aware of that Chazone, interesting.

Anti-monopoly laws exist, in US and EU but whether it will hold up here is different. This is a US company buying another, so likely to happen and neither MS or Activision are market leaders, so this is just 2 big ones joining. Nintendo, Sony, Nintendo, 2K and EA own enough of the rest of the industry to form competition. Nintendo nor Sony are buying rival publishers, other ones are but they don't control the platforms, so you know the games acquired will stay on those platforms but just sucks to be a certain game fan if you have happened to not purchase an MS platform.

My thoughts are that I would have rather seen the money spent on Take Two, or stretch it to buy EA.

I just ultimately dont play comparatively as many Activision titles. But the impact for the industry? Enormous and completely unprecedented

Just... what. The gaming buying spree has reached a new peak. How is any of the other players going to even react to this?

69 billions... Damn.

Also, how is Kotick still there? I swear he must have so much dirt on so many people...

But why aren't you counting the extra money you spend after Microsoft raises the price of GamePass? Unless you stop gaming in the near future, I don't see how that isn't being short sighted.