I'm getting rid of my Xbox Series X as well.

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To buy the Series X Starfield Edition when it's announced!

Tbf Japan to Xbox is like Chile, Lol.

The deal should be approved easy in all South American, Asian and African countries.

If it weren't for EC encompassing larger markets like Germany/France, etc, then half of Europe as well

Although China is reportedly waiting for EC's decision.

Yeah...Just cheaper for publishers to do digital showcases around the same time rather than pay to be in E3's building. Now who will travel all the way to LA specifically for E3 when Ubisoft, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, etc, aren't going to be there...People aren't travelling across across states when there's nothing major to play, and E3 makes most of its money from physical public participation, tickets, etc.

New Idas post: 

“ I wouldn’t say that the FTC is irrelevant, I think that they are easier to handle than other regulators (in this acquisition).

In any case, if the FTC is in the mood for a fight, they can delay things quite a bit.

What I'm expecting:

- Decisions from the majority of smaller regulators in 3-5 weeks (almost all of them will be approvals without remedies).

- Decisions from the CMA, EC and SAMR in late April - early May. The CMA is still the main obstacle there, but things look easier now.

- If everyone approves it, I think that MS will offer the same remedies to the FTC to sign a consent decree and be done with this merger by late June. An interesting topic is what remedies MS would offer, because if the CMA and EC approve the deal, the issues about the console market are non existent. But the FTC had concerns about the console, subscription services and cloud gaming markets. So, does MS offer remedies to the FTC only about cloud gaming or the rest too?

- Then the big question mark: the FTC accepts the remedies or rejects them and goes to court? Yesterday, Lisa Khan said that bad precedent is better than non precedent at all. Was the bad precedent from the Meta case enough or they need more?

Important to remember that the FTC Staff didn’t recommend to challenge the Meta case, but Khan overruled them and went ahead. Something similar could happen here, I guess.

The idea is that even if the FTC has potentially a weak case, if they are in the mood for more “bad precedent”, we are going to be here until late 2023 - early 2024. Meanwhile, MS will need to change the merger agreement to close the deal without them (the approval from the FTC is a requirement to close the deal).

So, the FTC is not a huge obstacle in theory, but they are not irrelevant because they can delay the whole process 6-9 extra months. Of course, those extra months would provide more insights about the industry and the case.

We’ll see what’s happens. “ 

seems fairly reasonable, and I am quite optimistic about the deal still 

Sub par product is a unsuccessful project which usually leads to startups going under.  Case in point will be Striking Distance.  You can say that Calisto Protocol has the visual chops for considering it AAA but a lot of technical issues on PC and Xbox, including sub par gaming performance will mean the game probably will not make back the investment put into it.  

Calling them liars would be a stretch, I would say they are promising something that at this moment is all potential without any concrete stability.  They may succeed but history shows probably very few of those studios will come out with a product and even fewer will have a successful project.  If anything they should all go either PS+ or GP day one to up their chances of success and breaking even.  Gamers talk about wanting new IP but they really not ready to risk that 70 bones unless they can give it a significant try.

Really hope Microsoft just closes over FTC.

I'm sure re-negotiating the merger agreement will just be crossing FTC off the list

I seem to recall a few months ago an opinion piece from someone in the industry who essentially said that FTC doesn't see these court cases as a loss, they see them as an opportunity to paint a narrative, basically they will build all these losses up and say "look, we are trying to stop corporations but we can't because the laws are old and outdated, we need the laws changed to be able to effectively tackle big tech"

Looking at their Meta court case, which was ridiculous on so many levels that anybody could have told them they would lose, I'm starting to think there is a little truth to the above speculation. Not sure even if that were true if it would work out for them though, Lol. If anything, I'm pretty sure the FTC's budget is more likely to be gutted.

But Sony pretty much bought every studio they own.  Interesting that your only take is to fine one sentence you have a question with and then paint the whole post as satire.

Yes I know they did. What exactly are you confused about? 

Ideally, this is what MS should do if they were serious, but well.. we know they aren't sadly. :/

Or even just create a new IP with one of their western studios that caters to a Japanese audience. Just look at Ghost of Tsushima. Made by an American Studio but was very popular in Japan. The 4th most popular ps4 game in Japan from a western developer beaten only by GTAV, Minecraft and Blackops 4. Catering to a Japanese audience also doesn't necessarily hurt sales elsewhere, again using ghosts as an example it sold over 10m worldwide.