Welp, that sucks about the FTC. Interesting that Google is all of a sudden a concerned party.

It was more interesting that Google didn’t become a concerned party until the moment they put the final nail in the coffin on Stadia

I’m starting to really wonder if the FTC will want to keep Activision out of the deal and MS only gets to have King and Blizzard

Huh, interesting to know. Although I don't get why they have to prepare (or file) a lawsuit to get concessions (I guess to make the concessions legally binding? although a simple contract would serve that same purpose I would have thought). Also agreed, I'm down to about 50% chance of it passing too. As the saying goes though "where one door closes another opens" so I would be interested in what MS strategy will be if the deal is blocked. 

IIRC. That would require Microsoft having to find someone to acquire Activision from them, I wonder how much Activision is worth on its own and who could realistically buy them. Honestly, it would be silly still but I'd full support them just abandoning the Activision side.

If only EA had the capital, Lol. Sell Activision to EA and then CoD comes into EA Play/Game Pass after a year or w/e.

Stream time for me. Going over all the news from today. You know the news I am talking about. 

https://www.twitch.tv/trunkswd

This interview from Lisa Khan just a day after the deal was announced.

KHAN: But no, look, I think it takes courage. These are enormously well-resourced companies, they are not shy about deploying those resources. And I think in these moments, it's important to kind of ensure where we're really showing these companies but also showing the country that enforcers are not going to back down because of, you know, these companies flexing some muscle or kind of trying to intimidate us. And so I think those are the types of lessons that we're trying to learn looking back over the last decade.

SWISHER: So you're not scared of losing necessarily is that's got to be a calculus as we can't win this or we we've got to be cautious because if we lose too many, we'll lose what.

KHAN: It's a hard assessment to make. But I think it's certainly true that deciding when moving forward and taking action is still worth it. Even if it's not a slam dunk case, even if there is a risk you might lose, there can be enormously, they can be enormous benefits from taking that risk. You might win, right, you lose all the shots you don't take. But I think what we can see is that inaction after inaction after inaction can have severe costs. And that's what we're really trying to reverse.

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Completely missed this back then, Lol. Feels like their mind was set from the start. It's completely political.

I can assure you Lisa, the country at large doesn't give a fuck about a gaming acquisition, Lol.

I feel like the meme of the 2 astronauts in space with one having a gun to the back of the other ones head talking how the game was always rigged, would be very appropriate here lol

Activision stock taking a little dip, Lol.

We're probably down to two ways that Microsoft wins.

Microsoft gets on their hands and knees and makes some concessions with the FTC that satisfy them and can be seen as a win for FTC or by some miracle, Microsoft convinces CMA to not sue to block and that would mean Microsoft can happily pound FTC in court, the issue here is CMA's deadline is months after FTC's so it's very unlikely.

So, it looks like we're left with two scenarios, either FTC is preparing a lawsuit for concessions or FTC sues to block, if they sue to block, the deal is dead because of the high likelihood that CMA would sue to block as well. I'm actually moving down from 50% to 40% because right now I'm leaning towards it being blocked.