69 billion for Candy Crush and King. Candy Crush earned 1 million $ per day... yes per day at it's peak. King has 11 studios, pumping out more games in these lines. So yes, King is worth the 69 billion. They got some tired old IPs from Blizzard as a bonus, but had to take the sexual harrassment company as well.

Well, MS was already on par with Nintendo even before the acquisitions in terms of revenue, so not really playing catch up. 2 out of 3 Microsoft consoles outsold Nintendo consoles their respective generation (Xbox>GC, XBO > WiiU).

So much bluray sales these days

I've seen this a few times in this thread, but they probably can't, or at least it would be very risky for them. 

Square's market cap (according to Google) is 689 billion yen. In just cash, Sony has 1.473 trillion yen. However, this is split between all of Sony's departments. If you take out Sony Financial Services, they only have 874 billion yen. This means Sony would either have to go into debt or spend all their cash to buy Square. Moreover, if Sony did this, you'd see Nintendo and probably Microsoft throw their hat into the ring to prevent this from happening. Nintendo has 1.07 trillion yen and has far more liquid assets (securities and CDs) than Sony does, so they could throw more money around than Sony could, if a buy out was possibility. So, no, Sony really can't buy Square.

Source: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/21q2_sony.pdf

The thing with playing games on gamepass, for me at least, is that I will never buy DLC for games I don't own. I rarely buy DLC anyway, but any games I 'have' through ps+, gamepass or any other rental service, are definitely out for buying add-ons.

But if other people want to fund my hobby, I'm not complaining :) Thanks!

I'm now strongly considering not buying a PS5 to get a gaming PC, many JP games that are sony console exclusives are released later on PC. A gaming PC + Steam Deck, and then never buying consoles again

I like to think that this is a reaction to FFVII Remake.

I believe Activision Blizzard is the largest third party company, as far as the ones that make games for consoles.  Google says Activision Blizzard's market cap is $64 Billion.  EA's market cap is $38 Billion.  Activision Blizzard is worth almost 2 EA's.  

I think the company might have been seen as "on sale" considering all of the problems it had lately.  Even before the sexual harassment stuff, people were leaving WoW in droves.  Microsoft sees a deal and decides to buy AB. 

I thought Microsoft spent a lot of money during the 360 era, but this really puts all of that to shame.  Gaming used to be a hobby for them, but now they are really putting some serious money into it.  There is not much limit to what they can do if Microsoft's board keeps giving Phil Spencer a bunch of blank checks.

That's why I was thinking, and those are scary thoughts 

Of course you can't, your competition bought them out.