I don't know when the math error occured with the CMA but it sure happen before the phase 1 results. Some increase in scrutinity from the EU might be due to CMA strong stance. It's also possible the FTC challenged MS only because the CMA was taking a hard stance and so decided to sue over because it thought the CMA was going to do the job for them. In other words, it's possible that most of the complexity in closing this deals can be traced to this single Math error and if it never occured it is possible the deals would have breeze through and would be done by now either with no FTC challenge or over it.

Lol.

Kingdom Hearts Diary Day 6: Why the fuck am I playing real time yugioh now... Wonder when I will need to believe in the heart of the cards.

All this negativity I think you need to start believing in yo self, it’ll be over in another 800hrs.

Hope it gets worse.

Bunch of Xbots at Cyberconnect.

The whole debate over FF16 has had me thinking about Sony's whole content exclusivity strategy over the last 10-15 years. Each individual instance of exclusive DLC, or a timed exclusive game, or a full exclusive game, doesn't compare to MS buying up a major publisher. But in aggregate and over the course of those last 10-15 they have done enormous damage to the Xbox brand, bordering on incalculable. The general expectation among the gaming public is that if you buy an Xbox, you are going to have a degraded and lesser experience with AAA third party games. You will have fewer of them, and the ones you do get will have less content or launch permanently incomplete on the Xbox version.

As Sony has whittled away Xbox's market share, the cost for them to secure these deals got cheaper and cheaper, and the cost for Xbox to secure similar deals got more and more expensive, to the point that the cost for Xbox to secure a timed 3rd party exclusive was about similar to simply buying the studio outright. Sony had to have known this, which why I genuinely think their strategy for 9th gen was to simply expect xbox to exit the console industry after 9th gen was completed. Recall the "playstation advantage" marketing campaign. It is so clear in hindsight they were going for a killshot, and they did not expect xbox to fight back, because the only way xbox could reasonably fight back was outright buying publishers en masse.

I think this is why there is so much panic in their CMA response documents. They know their exclusivity strategy is backfiring now, and they know they cannot compete if the industry is going towards an M&A lead consolidation. They are selling way more consoles right this moment, but the long term cost to forcing MS (yes, forcing) into buying publishers to ensure at minimum content parity with PlayStation is going to do huge long term damage to the brand.

I think you're both right and wrong there.  Microsoft started it, buying up Halo which was being made for both Mac and Playstation 2.  The Xbox 360 didn't have any problems competing with the PS3.  The PS3 didn't have too many more games than the 360 2563 vs 2157 games.  The 360 had a lot of full paid exclusivity and paid timed exclusivity deals on the first Bioshock, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Alan Wake, Dead or Alive 4/Extreme, Ace Combat 6, Blue Dragon, Crash Bandicoot Mind over Mutant (not on ps3), Dead Rising, Elder Scrolls IV, Last Remnant, Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey, Lost Planet, Metro 2033, Need for Speed, Naruto, Ninja Blade, Ninja Gaiden 2, Phantasy Star Universe, Quake 4, Ridge Racer 6, Saints Row, Witcher 2, Beyond Good and Evil HD, Braid, and 100's of other ones of various degrees.  Sony may be worse, but neither Sony nor Microsoft is innocent in the exclusivity deals.

Yeah, I agree 100%. Sony's recent strategy has been made crystal clear, they wanted to "Sega" Xbox out of the market over the course of gen 9. Their moves were clearly aimed at exactly this goal.

• Lock down Square Enix with lots of moneyhat deals, just as Square Enix was finally starting to properly support Xbox towards the end of last gen. Because Sony is tossing them moneyhats left and right, they now expect Gamepass moneyhats for every last Xbox port, which just isn't financially wise for Xbox, which is why Phil stopped giving them Gamepass money after Octopath, with Square support on Xbox almost totally ending since then.
• Convince developers to not release on Xbox at all. We have seen this with Stellar Blade (announced for Xbox under it's original codename, now a PS5 lifetime exclusive), Mihoyo (Genshin Impact still hasn't been ported to Xbox and now their new game isn't coming to Xbox either, even the Switch port of Genshin announced 2+ years ago feels dead in the water thanks to Sony money), Kena (PS5 timed exclusive period has been over for more than 6 months but still no Xbox port), and more.
• Pay 3rd parties where they can't afford full timed exclusivity deals for exclusive content within their games (Hogwarts, CoD, etc.) or pay 3rd parties to effectively sabotage framerate on Xbox Series X through spending more time on PS5 optimization (there is no hardware reason why Xbox Series X should have worse framerate than PS5 on so many 3rd party games so far this gen). The goal here is to make gamers feel like they will get a generally worse experience playing 3rd party games on Xbox Series X compared to PS5.
• Make exclusivity deals with developers or series once associated with Xbox. Arkane's Deathloop when Arkane's first two games were Xbox console exclusives. KOTOR Remake, a remake of an OG Xbox console exclusive. Rumors from more than 1 source that they may have Bioshock 4 locked down, Bioshock 1 was an Xbox 360 timed exclusive. They even tried to get Starfield, when Bethesda released Morrowind as a lifetime OG Xbox console exclusive, Oblivion as a 1 year timed 360 exclusive, and Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 each had Xbox marketing deals, it was only saved from PS5 timed exclusivity by Microsoft's ongoing Zenimax acquisition talks. The goal here was to convince longtime Xbox fans who have been with Xbox since the beginning that they would be better off with a PS5 than an Xbox Series console.

Sony was definitely going for a Xbox's throat this generation, and they clearly expected Xbox to just lie down like a lamb waiting for the slaughter. What they didn't expect was for Satya to open up Microsoft's huge cash reserves for Xbox, giving them not only $7b for Zenimax, but nearly $70b for ABK, with even more acquisitions still planned. Xbox is not going to go down quietly without a fight. You can see the clear desperation in Sony's statements about the ABK acquisition now, their plan to eliminate Xbox as a competitor this gen has gone up in smoke and now they are on the back foot, they know they lack the money to make big acquisitions that can compete with Xbox. They don't have over $100b in cash just sitting around like Microsoft did at the start if this gen, they have about $13b cash on hand right now, which is only enough to buy 1 or 2 of the cheaper publishers like Sega, Capcom, Koei Tecmo, Square Enix, or Ubisoft, but not enough for anything as big as EA or even Take-Two. All they can do to compete is acquire a smaller publisher or two and keep exploiting their market leader position to get cheaper timed exclusivity deals and exclusive content and such with 3rd parties.