I’m against Microsoft continuing to buy its way in to 1st place. But in the end, this merger changes nothing. Xbox always be in last. PlayStation has the “cool” image locked in.

Xbox needs a complete rebranding to succeed. “X” as a branding image, was a trend in the late 90s. It doesn’t work to sell consoles. I like it in all but.. it’s not working. 

Squares funds in general are not enough for ambitious projects to begin with that's why they either need Playstation or Nintendo to jump in for most big projects. They want 3rd parties to invest in their studios. Also the net worth of the 1.5 milion copies sold on Xbox for Square was far less than 50 million, since a lot of those units aren't sold at full price.

Around 30 percent off the revenue goes to Microsoft. It's also odd that the Xbox version only needs to make back it's porting costs to be worth it, whilst the PS and PC version needs to make back all marketing and development costs. Taking an exclusive deal (which MS has made plenty of themselves Ark 2 for example) makes more sense for SE its guaranteed Marketing (which costs a shit ton of money) and guaranteed funds for making the game and probably manpower if you need it. SE takes the latter for pretty much all big projects, especially since FF15 in the end was not very profitable.

I actually factored in many of those copies being sold at a discounts. I'd guess the range is somewhere between 1.5m copies x $30 average price per copy = $45m in revenue and 2m copies x $35 average price per copy sold = $70m in revenue. Hard to know without exact sales data from Square, but regardless of where it falls into that $45-70m range, it would still be profitable for sure, I would estimate it would take an internal Square team of maybe 30 devs just a few months to develop an Xbox port with how similar Xbox and Playstation are these days. Let's for the purposes of example say 30 devs working 3 months to do the port. Average salary of $70,000 per year on those 30 devs, divided by 4 since 3 months goes into 12 months 4 times, that is $525k in monthly salary for the dev team on the Xbox port. Then you have Xbox licensing fees, and the cost to print Xbox discs, and lastly the 30% cut of revenue that all 3 console makers get on 3rd party software, including Xbox. Even factoring all of those costs in, FFXV on Xbox should have turned a tidy little profit for Square. If it didn't, I highly doubt they would have been willing to pay Koei Tecmo's Team Ninja studio to develop an Xbox port of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. 

Being against this merger because "big tech gets bigger" isn't a sufficient enough argument and it's not a good enough reason for this to be blocked by regulators.
How does this deal negatively effect consumers? I can give plenty of examples how this benefits consumers. There will be more choices of where and how to play these games with Game Pass and Xcloud. Nintendo will gets CoD, Steam gets CoD and more, Sony doesnt lose CoD.
This benefits the employees since MS is neutral about Unions and Unions supports this merger.
This deal is not anti competitive or makes this close to a monopoly like some claim. Basically, MS will get a piece of pie in the console, PC, and mobile markets, but no where does it give them a monopoly or make it anti competitive in any of those markets. Sony and Nintendo are still larger in the console space and I really don't see that changing much if this deal goes through. PC gaming is dominated by Steam and this doesn't change anything. Apple and Google have the mobile market to themselves. At least MS could make some moves to disrupt mobile.

Let's be honest here. If the situation was reversed and Sony was the one trying to make this acquisition happen, most of the people here now defending the deal would be arguing against it.
It's just a matter of who do you like.

You're right. Many naysayers would suddenly be okay with it. Tbf, if Sony was acquiring ABK instead, it does change the dynamic a bit considering Sony's position in gaming. With that said, I believe it would go through and with probably less issues than what MS is having to deal with considering MS overall position in tech. I'm sure if Sony had MS money, they would have acquired a publisher or 2 by now. 

And the same could be said in reverse, I bet several in this thread who claim they are against the deal now would be ok with it if the shoe was on the other foot and Sony was the one acquiring them. That being said, there is a difference between Xbox acquiring ABK and Sony acquiring ABK. Xbox is coming off of a gen where they got outsold by both Sony and Nintendo by more than 2:1 each, and Sony and Nintendo both also lead Xbox massively in software sales, both 1st and 3rd party. So Xbox is 3rd place in all 3 metrics that are the biggest drivers of a console maker's success, while Sony is 2nd place in hardware, 1st place in 3rd party software, and 2nd place in 1st party software I believe. There would be some legitimate monopoly concerns with allowing Sony to acquire ABK, it could potentially catapult them above Nintendo in all 3 metrics while also pretty much dealing a death blow to Xbox (because we know that Sony, unlike Xbox, would likely have no issue whatsoever with making CoD exclusive to Playstation and PC, they have done so with numerous other franchises so far such as the 3 most recent main series Final Fantasy games, not to mention we have seen them buy exclusive CoD content in order to hurt Xbox, their primary competitor).

Meanwhile I personally don't believe that any single acquisition at this point is big enough to create an Xbox monopoly since they are 3rd place in all 3 key metrics of success, not ABK, not EA, not Take-Two/2K, not Ubisoft, etc. The acquisitions of Zenimax and ABK combined are still unlikely to catapult Xbox even into 2nd place in any of the 3 main metrics of console maker success, hardware, 1st party software, or 3rd party software, those 2 acquisitions will just make Xbox a less distant 3rd place in each of the 3 metrics most likely, which is a good thing imo, if Sony feels the pressure of Xbox nipping at their heels they might do a better job with pricing and such, benefitting Sony gamers.

I think the main reason for that would be Sonys stance when it comes to supporting other consoles and PC. Most likely if Sony was the ones making this deal PC players would have to wait at least a year for releases and xbox could kiss their ass.

However if Sony gave the same deal they gave bungie that all their games would come to PC and xbox day and date with all the same features and nothing cut i dont think many pc players or Xbox players would have a problem with it. But we all know that would never happen.

However you would see many of the same Sony fans who are against this deal praising it and calling it good for the industry even if Sony did block all that content from PC and Xbox and Nintendo.

Its just like i said in another earlier some Sony fans are making a bigger deal of this and saying it doesnt compare to what Sony does with money hats for the simple reason being the price MS are paying. Yet to me Sony money hatting 4-6 AAA exclusives every single year does more damage then Ms buying a company who atm pretty much only release 3-4 games and only one of them release yearly. and when Ms have said they will keep that yearly released game on other platforms.

Its good to know we are still living in the 90's early 2000's .

Bill Gates still works at MS and has been disguised as Satya this entire time.