Idas Said:

And New Zealand delays it again :P

Now a decision is due by June 9th.

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(They don't need New Zealand's approval to close FWIW. Only FTC/CMA/EC/SAMR).

"Microsoft is a large company...But corporate size is not what determines the nature of competition"

"It is important to distinguish between size and harm, lest our efforts to address the very real concerns posed by digital platforms are misplaced and wasted."

EU to Tap Former Obama Enforcer as Top Antitrust Economist

Oh its not over, we still have the FTC situation and all that juicy data MS lawyers requested from Sony.  We are going to get a lot of leaks on that info and it should be glorious fury between the Bots and Ponys in an Epic showdown of mass destruction.

You reminded me of this old gem from 2005:

As much as I'd love to see juicy industry secrets leaked, I hope it doesn't come to that because that trial is set for August so this shit would be dragged even further out, I expect Microsoft will close over FTC and force FTC to either take them to federal court (which I would expect to throw the case out easily) or drop their case. I'd also expect once CMA/EC/SAMR approve the deal that Sony will suddenly stop supporting FTC, Lol.

I think it is pretty telling how well the Amazon renewed Series S units are selling. It has been the top Xbox Series SKU on Amazon for like 2 or 3 months now at least I think. Firstly the fact that Amazon was able to obtain so many used units for their renewed program suggests that quite a few bought a cheaper Series S while waiting on PS5 and Series X availability in the early gen, and then sold that Series S later, and since PS5 supply is fixed and Series X supply isn't, it means that we saw quite a few people move from Series S to PS5 most likely, disappointing for sure. But, conversely, there is good news, because Series S is selling so well Amazon renewed, we do have more people coming back into the Xbox ecosystem to replace those people who sold their used S units.

The 2nd point, if Series S can sell this well renewed at $260, why in the world is Xbox still trying to sell a new Series S at $300? It's clearly not selling well at that price, the Amazon Renewed Series S is at #46 on the sales chart, while the primary new Series S SKU right now, the Bonus Bundle with the GaaS game cosmetics and microtransaction currency, is at #307 by comparison. With new Series S sales having slowed down as much as they have over the past few months, what exactly is Xbox waiting on? Last gen we never saw them hesitate to price drop Xbox One when it needed it, they were constantly giving it temporary and permanent price drops to entice sales. At the very least you would think Xbox would have come up with a more enticing bundle for Series S by now to help it sell, after a Holiday season of declining sales and now 4 months of declining sales in 2023, why not bundle a full game with Series S for $300? Redfall is the perfect opportunity as that is 1st party meaning they don't have to pay to compensate a third party for lost sales as a result of a bundled copy, and yet nothing announced so far. Diablo 4 bundled would be an even better choice, though they might not be 1st party by the time it launches in June thanks to the FTC. 

I really think Xbox is going to have to step it up this gen in terms of pricing and bundling and limited edition console designs. They are not putting in anywhere near the effort in those areas that they did last gen, and the effort they put into those areas last gen is what kept Xbox afloat through the roughest period in it's history, PS4 would have easily tripled Xbox One had Xbox not been on the ball with pricing, bundling, and limited edition console designs. Now that PS5 is actually trippling Xbox Series sales worldwide this past quarter, what exactly is Xbox waiting on?

The Series S is pretty worthless on the used market here in the UK. I can go on cashconverters right now and order a used series S with a controller for £124 delivered. RRP is £250. That's a really good deal, but in general you can find them for £150 no problem with a bit of looking. I can only assume it's over saturation of the market because I think the Series S was a decent deal for £250 so £150 or less even used is crazy. They made far too many Series S and not enough X.

There are more Series S than people that want them and it's driven prices into the ground.

It'll be interesting to see Microsoft's hardware projections this Tuesday for the next quarterly report: April - June.

It may give us an idea if Microsoft expects the stock situation to be fixed, if they expect a fairly decent decline then it probably isn't.

Should have aimed for that mythical £99 price tag.

Yeah, things never got quite that bad over here, Series S was still in pretty heavily in demand even through this past Holiday season in the US, whenever I'd go into my local Walmart last year they would have 1-2 Series S units in stock at most, more often than not no Series S units at all, same as Series X and PS5. The large amount of them that Xbox made for Holiday 2022 finally pushed Series S supply over Series S demand in the US, and we have seen sales numbers at the $300 price tag with no bundled game slack off in the first 4 months of this year as a result. UK on the other hand, I was hearing stories of full display cases in retail stores by mid 2022, so demand for S was clearly met much earlier in the UK than in the US. But no matter which way you look at it now, Xbox clearly has a surplus of S units in their 2 biggest markets for Xbox sales, they're going to have to do something soon or else retailers are going to start to get fed up with how much Series S inventory they have sitting around unsold. They better be planning to announce the first S price cut on the E3-like Summer Showcase or something.