"[...] it was then clear that Microsoft intends to control the future of gaming and manage huge IP's that sell super well on Playstation consoles.

Microsoft has clear intentions to monopolize the future of gaming via brute force (they will fail). When they gain complete control over some of the most popular gaming IP's and developers, they won't be so nice anymore. They're already raising prices after speaking against it for temporary PR points, and they attempted to double Live Gold's price and only stopped because Xbox isn't powerful enough to absorb the backlash. Things should and will change when they're more comfortable."

That's some slippery slope logical fallacy. Your argument is they will get bad/worst believe me on it. The thing is if MS get worst it will lose its base as it happened in past, as happened to Sony in the past. Also, this deal isn't gonna result in MS having any or close to any sort of monopoly and it ain't like they gonna try to go there anyway. It would be so stupid to create a monopoly just to see the government forced to divest the majority of it.

"A lot of people argued that GamePass won't need any price hikes anytime soon, and the "possible" loss in traditional sales from the inclusions of CoD and the likes would be offset by an increase in subscriber count. I argued that price hike is inevitable if every big Zenimax/ABK game is added day and date, or else Xbox profitability would decline (if it's not in the minus already) and MS higher ups may not be happy about it forever. MS missed their GamePass subs target for two consecutive years."

And you may both be right you argue 2 different things.

"It's one thing to argue that the benefits/potential outweigh the negatives/risks (fair take), it's another to argue it's only bad for Sony."

I was speaking about actors in the industry not consumer-wise. But even then, and except for Sony consumers in regards to content other than CoD and already announced ps5 titles, all I see is nothing else than fear-mongering and slippery slope fallacy not a fact-based unavoidable consequence of the deal.

"Starfield should be the first "real test", ignoring Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 which left the charts as soon as they entered. Ragnarok sold the majority of copies on PS5... let's see how the Xbox version of Starfield fairs against the PC version. Oh wait... we can't... MS hardly shares anything! The only milestone in recent years they proudly shared is Sea of Thieves selling 5 million on Steam, without announcing Xbox numbers (where the vast majority of GamePass users are)."

Not sure I get what you mean by Starfield being a test thing but sure MS will get stats from it has with all titles, as for Sea of thieves they also announced 30 million unique players across all platforms in June this year. 

Not in Japan.

I'm for it, good riddance for Activision Blizzard. It can only go up for them from there.

Doubly so if Bobby Kotick gets booted out.

No way of knowing how long the PS to PC time would be with big publisher buyouts like this. i'd honestly guess that if Sony were to buy a publisher of this size that quite a few of that publisher's games would get faster PC releases, if not day 1. PC release systems would already be in place, and having PC releases is really the only way Sony would be able to justify such big publisher purchases.  

It's smaller studios who I believe will maintain the current PS > PC release schedule, but that is clearly in flux: Sony are still experimenting with it. 

It's easier to get away with fucked up practices or at least dial back on "pro-consumer" stuff when you have a massive catalogue of popular games that people will trade their testicles for, that's just common sense. MS's game lineup upon ABK's acquisition should beat Sony and even Nintendo's in popularity (potentially even if they left Playstation) I know enough about Microsoft's other divisions, the history of Xbox, and the market to form reasonable opinions or expectations.

Sony is capable of getting away with worse practices than before, because they over the years built a really strong lineup of 1st party content that complements the excellent 3rd party support which Microsoft acquisitions are now threatening to weaken (It doesn't matter what they say they want to do... the simple fact that they're in Microsoft's control is a threat in and of itself, and may or may not manifest as soon as the contracts end. In Zenimax's case, it's already manifesting). Then you've got Nintendo which doesn't even bother price dropping their hardware or software, never mind putting their new games on a subscription service. Both Sony and Nintendo could get away with things that MS didn't have the luxury to consider, because Xbox's software was decidedly inferior that they had to fall back on value/consumer-friendliness selling points or else they're fucked. The New MS with the smaller acquisitions + Mojang + Zenimax/Bethesda + ABK isn't the same small player whose entire selling point is for-the-consumer and value. They'll have "other options" to consider, and this is the part that's making Sony panic, and the part that could lead to more unnecessary "revenge-acquisitions" and wastes of money that could have gone to cultivating and establishing countless developers and talents.

If I understood you correctly, you said Sony putting their games day 1 on PS+ is 99% more likely than MS toning down their day and date releases (or something along these lines). Starfield should be a good test to see what kind of impact being on a service day 1 does to the sales performance of a game with a great potential (I'm pretending/assuming Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite never had potential). If the impact on sales is too significant (exiting most charts not long post release), Sony would be less eager to try out Microsoft's model.

Microsoft's "number of players" are padded statistics that don't mean much to Sony or Nintendo. MS has to prove that their games are "selling" gangbusters despite being on GamePass, and only then will the idea of Sony putting their games on PS+ day 1 be feasible for them. They're not going to trade traditional sales for an increase in subs (and neither will Nintendo lol).

Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite both underperformed sales wise. If Starfield underperforms too, MS may consider other options, and Sony won't copy them. Just my opinion.

I'm against it, but mostly since I'm against most major acquisitions as large as this, by giant corporations. Where I would draw the line would be something like Sony purchasing Bungie. That's pushing the limits as far as I'm concerned, for a single purchase anyway.

Now if MS (or Sony) were to just simply acquire 20 Bungie's over a short period of time instead, that shouldn't be a loophole that exists either. There would need to be some sort of general purchase price vs time formula as to how much they could acquire and how quickly, based on the size of the buyer or who's funding them.

The only way I could be ok with the MS AB deal, would be if MS could not buy any more gaming companies for a long enough period of time afterwards. The problem with that, is with the AB purchase, along with the others like Zenimax, etc, it should be far far easier for MS to use those resources to simply build new in house studios from if they want to grow, so they shouldn't be anywhere as needy to acquire more companies anyway.

It would be different if AB was on the verge of bankruptcy or something like that, but just because it may have a toxic culture doesn't mean a giant like MS (or Sony) should be able to purchase it based on the promise that they'll clean it up. Nothing guarantee's they will fix the problems, and even if they do, what they consider to be a problem or a serious concern, and how much get's fixed is up to them internally really.

It would also be more acceptable if AB were just split up into a bunch of smaller pieces and sold off that way. Then you'd have more equal distribution of the IP's and you'd also be more likely to see it all remain published on multiple platforms. A giant corporation like MS can easily afford to lock all those franchises down to Game Pass if they really wanted to. Where as if it's all split up, either all IP ends up exclusive, or all ends up multiplatform, and odds are they'd end up remaining shared. MS says they want to share most of it. Sony says they will be sharing Bungie games. I'd even suggest the sales be offset so someone like MS wouldn't be forced to buy only one piece necessarily, but based on a money vs time vs buyer size formula, they shouldn't be able to buy all the pieces, one after another.

While I wouldn't be considered liberal, today anyway, I'm not for the giant corporations like we have today and have had for decades at the least. Things have gotten way out of hand, and the constant acquisitions they make to just keep growing larger, especially giant acquisitions like $70 billion gaming corporation buyouts, is absurd, no matter which mega company is buying them. What ever happened to, be careful or we'll break you up like Mother Bell? Can you imagine what communications would be like today if they hadn't?

What I do find odd, is why does it seem like now all of the sudden, is the time to finally take a stand, when it comes to the buyout of a gaming company of all things? Is it just timing? Is it that gaming has become that mainstream? You just wouldn't expect now to be that time.

I don't really like it. First we have MS buying Activision Blizzard.

What then stops Sony from buying SE?

Valve then buys Ubisoft?

Nintendo buys Namco Bandai or Koei Tecmo?

Amazon buys EA and Sega?

That is only if this deal goes through and MS becomes extremely competitive with the others, then the other corporations feel threatened.

For those thinking, it works for me (right now), or it does more good than bad (right now), you're not thinking long term. The majority of the time, way more often than not, in the long run, this will flip and will no longer work for you, and will be worse than better.

This is why, in the past, people used the government to keep corporations from getting too big, and if those corporations used loopholes to get around that, people just used the government to break them up into smaller separate companies. It's also why, in the past, people tried to keep the government small. The bigger anything get's the more of a problem it eventually becomes, to the point of eventually being far more detrimental than beneficial.

The problem with the AB deal is that it's not just about gaming, it's about MS as a whole as well. XB may be peanuts compared to PS, but Sony is a tiny woman vs the Giant of a man that is MS, and that giant isn't exactly scared of the government let alone Sony. That's simply too big no matter how you slice it.. MS should simply be grateful they haven't been separated like a window frame.. Maybe that's why glass today is sold as one giant pain..

I ended up voting as neutral, although I've mostly been against it during debates etc.

I would say I'm fine specifically with this acquisition, provided that there are no additional major acquisitions that follow. In other words, MS stops here, Sony does not retaliate, Amazon and Meta keeps out of it etc.

Xbox needs this to compete and I'm all for the survival of Xbox and strong competition to Sony in the traditional console/hardcore gamer sector.

However, if every other major corporation starts doing the same thing, those that are for this acquisition will very quickly regret it. Sony could buy capcom or Ubisoft, the Saudi Prince can buy EA who knows. Why anyone would be for this type of extreme consolidation of the industry is beyond me.

Furthermore to that, the services impact on gaming quality is going to be noticeable in the coming decade if every major publisher follows suite.

Have not seen any responses to this concern from those that are overly positive about this deal. Is the thinking that Xbox got the biggest publisher therefore they don't care what happens next? Or is the assumption that the other major companies don't have the will or money to follow suite?