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.

The thing to do would be to stop the AB acquisition, and force AB to split things up if they want to sell, and then let companies bid. How the timing of the sales was handled along with the bidding is another thing, but this would be the better start. More would have to follow and soon enough. You can't just have this for right now and hold it to gaming related business.

Where did u get forza horizon 5 performed badly??. It did even better than its predecessor by a huge amount. It surpassed 10 million on lunch and it's over 20 million players now. That's huge and gamepass performed greatly. 

Halo infinite may not sell as well as halo3 or 2 but it sold more than what new games try to achieve and gamepass helped it

Kyuu said:

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 just think some of the arguments being made are beyond petty, "such and such company does this, so why shouldn't this company?". They do, they always have. If you think this is about anything other than money and control, be real. I am actually fine with whatever happens. I do not play any Activision games and the Blizzard ones I do are either out, announced or long since out on other platforms. Even then I can sign up to PC Gamepass and instead of paying £60 for a new game, I can pay £1.

Yet, MS are not some underdog in the console/games industry. They are the 2nd biggest tech company in the world. They once tried to buy Nintendo. They are not your friend.

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?