Sure, but would it of been as emotionally engaging with the old perspective? To me they're apples and oranges but this perspective serves the tone and focus of the games narrative. 

Openning up more studios or just buying studios that were already doing fine and delivering games on a wide scope of platforms? That's the question for me.

I'm actually pretty easy with this Acquisition because Activision hasn't interested me in years and I'd like to see Toys For Bob put to better use than COD. But widely speaking, competition is great when it drives innovation but simply buying stuff from other players isn't innovative. For example if Sony was to buy Square or Capcom I don't think that would benefit anyone.  

P.S: I don't think Sony will 

So much salt from people. The reality is for those of us with a medium or better PC rig, we just got a bunch of free games. For those on the fence about which console to get, the choice just got easier. For those that were going to buy both reluctantly, you at least have more reasoning to stick with just one and save some money.

Many people have a console + another console, or a console + a mid range or better PC. With dlss, going forward you won't even need that decent of a rig to play on PC. With cloud improving it will be even more accessible.

Yeah, this stinks for those that absolutely refuse to game in any other way other than Nintendo/Sony natively, but the number of people in that category are growing smaller each gen. The market will always focus on where the industry is heading in general, not on an increasingly small minority of purist fanboys.

Hopefully MS will work with the ABK Workers Alliance and eventually it will lead to unionize all MS's game studios.

However instead of putting pressure on Activision-Blizzard as Phil was 're-evaluating' their relationship in November, it just turns out they were in negotiations with Bobby Kotick. These deals take time. Actions speak louder that words. So I'm not all that confident things will quickly get better for the employees. Nvm these big take overs always lead to shuffling people around and making a lot redundant.

Instead MS and Sony could  have worked together to put actual pressure on acti-blizzard. Threaten with ultimatums to remove their stuff from sale if things didn't improve. I'm sure Sony and MS have a code of conduct for publishers as well.


On the other side this move is a clear signal that game pass needs to grow into the mobile market
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/18/22889457/microsoft-activision-blizzard-acquisition-mobile-gaming-candy-crush
Streaming is the future and mobile games are cheaper to make than full fledged games while making a lot more money.

Core gamers are just there to get gamepass started, the end goal is dominance in the mobile market. For now you can still enjoy great deals on gamepass for console and PC, but the focus will shift to mobile. A monthly fee to get access to an ad free games library on mobile (still full of mtx ofcourse). Premium subscription for streaming. This move has little to do with Sony nor Steam, it's to go after Apple, Google play and Tencent.

Sony makes about 25 billion in gaming revenues yearly, all together. Compare that to the 90 billion mobile gaming makes.
https://www.businessofapps.com/news/eight-mobile-games-reach-over-1-billion-each-in-revenues-in-2021/
That's what you spend 69 billion for, not to try get a bigger piece of the stagnant AAA games market. (stagnant compared to mobile revenues)


But sure, as a silver lining, things could improve for the employees at Activision-Blizzard. Atm I'm sure they're all wondering what will happen to their job and what they will be working on in the future, next to now having a board that doesn't care at all anymore as they're just sitting out their time waiting for their golden handshake.

A bit off-topic but it's impressive how much more revenue the App Store generates considering iOS is at 30% market share.

so how is xbox becoming competitive not good for the market?

They could have easily implemented a radar in the HUD but instead went with really ugly arrows that shouldn't be there.

Sony has somewhere between $20 b and $45 b in cash assets. But that's not the only means there is.

For instance, Take-Two just acquired a company that is two-thirds of its own market share. AMD bought Xilinx literally without spending a penny. A large enough company can do a lot of things using their own stock and loans.

Honestly, though, I don't think Take-Two is worth it after buying Zynga in terms of yearly revenues. EA or Nintendo are too risky/expensive, respectively, unless there's a straight-up merger with SIE. I think it'll be both Capcom and SE at some point in the next couple of years or so.

Those same games on PC Gamepass are and will be purchasable on windows store. 

MS has tons of competition still, and more will arise. When there are voids, that's when new companies pop up. If the quality or amount of games these studios make decreases going forward, then that gives new studios the wiggle room to pop up and have success in the market taking advantage of those companies not satisfying the market.

In the next 20 years there's going to be new companies that rise to the level of activision/blizzard, Bethesda, etc. Companies we don't even know the name of yet because they don't exist yet. They will have IPS that don't currently exist that all of us will be talking about 20 years from now because of how popular they will become. This is how capitalism works and the market works. Voids fill naturally.

And if there aren't many of those new Studios and aren't many new IPS by those Studios that's because the studios that were purchased by larger companies continue to release quality product at a pace the market deems is acceptable.

You do understand you need cash for operations right? If Sony tries to buy Square, that means they are taking a substantial about of cash from other divisions. Again, gaming is only a fourth of Sony's business, so to take up this much cash just to try and one-up Microsoft isn't feasible. Sony doesn't have a lot of excess liquidity to throw around.