That's the thing. I'm huge ARPG fan. I'm playing Diablo since the start, playing D2R/D3 right now still, every season/ladders. 
As an hardcode Diablo fan, I'm more than happy about the route they are going...

And I'm playing POE... POE "is" a free to play game but you get what you paid for... Diablo and POE are 2 different beasts. I'm sorry for the POE fans out there but Diablo is just at another level and I'm okay to pay 70$ for that. I would never have payed anything for POE. But the free model works for that kind of game (lacking so much content/production).

Now, POE 2 will come with a campaign but I do not think it will be close to what Diablo 4 offers (in term of content too). Which would not justify a full price anyway. This is def. an assumption and they can prove me wrong, but so far that's how F2P games work. Other than maybe one or two exception, the quality/content of any initial F2P game is just not close to any AAA out there.

See it like that, and tell me if I'm wrong, because I think this is just people being stuck on principle at this point:

- If a game comes out at 70$, with no microtransactions, this is fine...

- If a game comes out F2P, but no initial price this is fine....

- If a game comes out at 70$ (and with the full content expected for it like any AAA game out there) but also with micro-transaction to support future content, people are calling this a joke? 

Of course, all of thise would be fine, if the following asumption were true:

- Free to play games offers the same quality of production/content than AAA (nope...)
- The initial 70$ would not give you a fully completed game with tone of content (nope... Diablo 4 is a fully fleged AAA game)
- The seasonal/battlepass fees would be required to access new content in the future (nope...)

I also did entertain the idea MS could just pull out of the UK market upon a negative decision as this deal amount to many times the revenue from UK Xbox gets. However since MS his making the deal and not Xbox the move would be prohibitively drastic. 

There's also another avenue I believe MS can try which is challenging the UK government constitutionally. MS could challenge the CMA mandate in itself rather than the decision it renders. It could try to argue that the procedure and non-oversight of the body have allowed them to make decision that disregard the actual legality of a proposed merger, and base said decision on along partisan line or personal view which also leave the body vulnerable to lobbying. If MS were to take this route the deal would likely be already dead though but could ask compensation to the UK government for any arm done to MS which would be a staggering  amount here and they would likely be join in their fight by other entity like Meta.

Is Path of Exile 2 coming to consoles on launch, or just PC? The website makes it seem like it is for all versions, but I can't find anything concrete. Never played PoE, maybe I should since it's free.

You should try it :) I was not trying to discourage you. POE is a good game at the end for the price

For POE2, I think it is on PC only at first. Was planing to play it there at least; I did not see it anywhere announced for console.

It's Diablo on steroids.

I do find it kind of ironic how divided the fanbases for Diablo and PoE seem to be. Alot of them seem to treat it like console wars from what I have seen, fanboying over one while attacking the other. It's ironic because the two seem to just play off of one another, PoE largely copied and improved on Diablo 2, which resulted in alot of classic Diablo fans preferring it to the more casualized Diablo 3. Now it's Blizz's turn to largely copy off of PoE, from what I have seen online they have taken several gameplay systems from PoE that weren't in earlier Diablo games and improved them a bit and then put them in Diablo 4. The two are just going back and forth playing off of one another and improving on each other's systems, while the fanboys of one game attack the other. Seems to me like if you like Diablo, you should also like PoE, and vice-versa, there is no need for these fanbase attacks, just play and enjoy both.

Yeah, I think what I read was that Microsoft can't pull only ABK out of the UK market without facing massive fines and obviously pulling out Microsoft entirely is completely unrealistic, I think the fines don't exactly have a limit either so it wouldn't be be some insignificant number. Plus CMA in the PF's are stating they want the concessions to apply worldwide apparently.

One of the lawyers on Era was talking about the fines limit, I forgot what they said exactly but it was basically like, it'd be a huge amount, every year. So if Microsoft even attempted the above, they'd face a massive political shitstorm, fines up the ass and likely wouldn't be a good look to other regulators because it'd basically be Microsoft saying they don't care what you say, we'll just pull out of your market, Lol.

Yeah, I think I like your idea, Lol. Unfortunately won't mean much for the deal though as you said.

I'm really interested in seeing how Microsoft fights CMAs decision if it comes down to it, I really want to know what they try to argue to CAT...But it's a bit funny that even if CAT agrees with Microsoft and says CMA made a mistake, they just tell CMA to make another decision which can be another block, Lol. 

Probably...I can see them doing all except from Luna.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said the agency may be too strapped to conduct a study of the electric industry sought by several members of Congress and a coalition of advocacy groups.

‘Significant Strain’ Prevents FTC’s Electric Industry Study - FTCWatch

Maybe drop your stupid unwinnable cases such as the one against Microsoft so you can actually do something good elsewhere, Idk...Just a thought.

Blew their load on a case which literally nobody gave a fuck about, Lol.

Has to be one of the dumbest decisions in recent regulatory history to go after Meta's acquisition of Within.

So hypothetically, if MS releases a pro console, how do people think they will arrange that?

3 consoles where there is a Series S, Series X, and a Series X2 or something?

2 consoles where Series X becomes the Series S, Series X2 becomes the new Series X?

2 consoles where Series X2 becomes the new Series X, and Series S2 becomes the new Series S?

Some inconceivable fourth way?