I highly doubt this price increase announcement with have any effect on the acquisition outcome. MS is matching what most publishers are already charging, not exceeding. Most of us realized it was going to happen eventually, especially with current gen only games right around the corner. 

Same here. It was either now when all the major cross-gen games are no longer going to be a thing and it’ll be exclusively current-gen going forward, or do it in another year or two after your Starfield, Redfall, and Forza Motorsport, and everyone really would’ve gone wtf since it would be so out of left field with there having already been several current-gen games by that point. 

@coolbeans

Even tho it seems like your reply was wiped I did manage to read it so yeah I have high hopes for Dreadwolf. The DA team have shown even creating one in 9 months (DA2) they can do a decent job so Dreadwolf should be fine. 

£70 for MS first party titles isn't an issue unless you're one of those boomers who buys physical still and doesn't subscribe to the cult of GP.

MS raises their prices for games, at the same time the value of Game Pass increases. Good job.

Welcome back! Past few days in FTC land have been wild.

From Politico's report to now...

NY Post.

• - Rift at the FTC.
• - One Democrat taking a sympathetic view on the merger.
• - One Republican already in favour.
• - Lina wants it blocked 
• - Biden reportedly wants the deal approved.

CWA.

• - Released a statement the next day, telling the FTC to approve the deal, specifically calling out Lina.

Brad Smith: President of Microsoft.

• - Releases an opinion piece through WSJ on the same day that blocking the deal would be bad.
• - Confirms a 10-year contract to make each new "Call of Duty" release available on PlayStation the same day it comes to Xbox.

Zenimax

• - Over 300 Zenimax employees vote to unionise on the same day, Microsoft staying neutral, CWA again praises Microsoft.

Found the man responsible for all these twists at the FTC.

Lina seems to really want this deal blocked in a desperate attempt to look like she's going hard on big tech. Microsoft is using their political influence to sway the Democrats on the panel over, I think Biden will want it approved after they just slapped down railway unions, now if this is approved, it could become the largest tech union in America, it has the chance to send a ripple effect across the entire industry, workers also get a major win.

If Lina does block it, then she's just sending a big fuck you to unions and workers which definitely isn't a good look for the Democrats. Considering there's zero strong arguments that this is a monopoly, or that this significantly lessens competition (actually easier to argue that it increases it) or that it harms consumers in a significant way compared to the benefits to consumers. It'd really be a block simply cause "big tech bad".

Damn... did that dickless dick-posting hacker try to go after me again?

I never knew that about DA2.  I still want to do a Dragon Age streak.

We're still on track for 2,000 posts in 30 days despite losing two days thanks to the damn hacker!

Is VGChartz loading slow for anyone else?

Good on my end.

Depends on who's definition of woke.