i fail to see how this is a win for the consumers at large? legitimately wondering as i see corporate oligopolies/massive mergers as net-negatives for the consumer, so i'm confused by the general sentiment here.

is this not similar to what disney and NBC have done in the movie/sports/television industry? and i thought we all thought that was a bad thing? late-stage capitalism vibes?

i also must profess, i certainly do not care about the possible "harm" done to sony. in fact, the judge's comment in regards to the FTC's supposed purpose of defending the consumer and not mega-corporations caught me off-guard, as wouldn't allowing the deal to go through be, in essence... defending a major corporation over the consumer? 

interested to hear people's thought process on why this is a good development. 

EDIT: i want to mention that i'm attempting to create a more philosophical argument here rather than "these companies benefit bc of this" or "the consumer gets to have more cloud games (all of which will be owned by one corporation.)" i view this as a bad thing because of what it poses for things to come. the entertainment industry wasn't always ruled by the few, nor the beauty industry, nor the food and beverage industry. all of this happens due to a slippery slope.

The one good thing the FTC and CMA got out of this was forcing MS to play nice with other cloud streaming services and other platforms.

You'll get ActiBlizz games on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, PC (Steam and Battle.net, maybe Epic Games Store down the line) stream the games on xCloud, Nvidia GeForce Now, Boosteroid, Nware, and one or two other streaming services that I don't recall off the top of my head. But streaming services that would never in their company's lifetime been able to afford ActiBlizz games on their service.

And those weren't just publicity stunts. Xbox first-party games have already been coming to those services over the past couple of months.

Just through xCloud alone, you'll be able to stream these games on Samsung TVs, iPhone, iPad, Android (smartphone and tablet) Mac computers through Safari, and additional web browsers.

That's a LOT of additional players that will get to play these games.

One thing people really need to get out of their mind and think that it was part of the court proceedings is that this is concerning Microsoft as a whole. This entire court preceding was pertaining exclusively to Xbox's overall marketshare in gaming and nothing else. 

Because they want they favourite plastic box to win no mather what the consequences are

This isn't a good development, simple as that. It's merely the latest in a series of developments that have turned the industry more and more sour in the past decade or so.

I personally view it as a negative. But talking about the court cases and the FTC, the concern is whether it should be a legal thing. As you've pointed out, it's similar to what Disney and NBC have done so, it's a little hard to make the case it should be illegal here, and apparently, the FTC has not done a good job of making the distinction. 

I'm really torn on this. On one hand, the videogame market is in a dangerous race to swallow up as many companies and studios as possible, which is going to hurt actual development a lot (just imagine how many small/medium series are not going to see new games because their mother companies are focused on the big hitters). Plus, if there's a crash, the inevitable reestructuring will see many studios closed. Not to mention the absolute loss for gamers that the loss of old 3rd parties in favor of exclusives.

On the other hand, we're talking about Acti-Blizzard, a company that was sinking under its own anti-consumer practices for more than a decade, so any shakeup is welcome. Plus, it's difficult to justify stopping the purchase for anything beyond the sheer size of it, since so many purchases have been done as of late. Hell, if Sony felt like they needed games like Acti-Blizz to stay in business, they could create their own IPs to actually compete with. Nintendo didn't have access to CoD since the WiiU, and yet they now have Splatoon to compete with other shooters. PS is definitively in better shape than XBox, so it's not like they'd be unable to do it.

I would honestly prefer if these massive companies actually competed for their audience instead of trapping them into closed ecosystems. Then again, I've lost faith in people actually making a customer revolt work. They could have stopped paid online, MTX, DRM, the degratation of many series and many other stuff if they just had stopped purchasing games. And yet, here we are...

I would be inclined to think this deal was a bad thing if Microsoft was in first or a very close second place in console, PC, or Mobile. The fact of the matter is they are a distant last place in console, a non player in mobile, and 7th on PC. The cloud market is so nascent that it’s irrelevant.

This deal injects badly needed competition into the gaming market. It specifically puts a level of pressure on Sony it hasn’t felt since probably 2012. This will result in high quality products and services at more competitive prices.

Compete or die.

honestly, i'm not even really surprised by MS' "good-will" in the way they are handling cloud gaming. even before this, MS brought their internal IPs to other platforms and had no qualms about it. (thinking of Minecraft, for instance.) 

my problem isn't even necessarily with how i think MS should or will handle their now-future IP, just rather that i think this sets a dangerous precedent for the gaming industry as a whole. one that already has gone way too far down the slippery slope in the movie and television industry, as i mentioned in the OP.

if that's the one good thing we as consumers got out of this, i'm not sure that will be good enough to cover the fire this has basically already started in the industry.

i guess the FTC (or whomever) framed the scope of the case poorly then, as i would think this, in the long-run, does concern Microsoft as a whole and not just XB. i'm actually kind of confused by what you mean here considering they are one-in-the-same in my mind.

i've seen people make the argument that it's ridiculous for the FTC to be focusing on the gaming industry now when they didn't care about the aforementioned. though, to me, it's never too little, too late. i think this should be a legal case and should have been in the case of Disney/NBC as well. isn't that the whole point of the FTC and the original anti-trust act? the FTC clearly needs a fire lit under their ass as they are not and have not been doing their job very well, for awhile.

Cheap games on Game Pass.

I think MS buying ABK would have went through as I think Activision are now a one game company and Blizzard are a shadow of themselves (monetisation in recent games proves this), and no billions from MS can fix that. King is MS just joining a market they should have entered ages ago, buying their way in just what MS does. I do not think CoD or Blizzard's library of games matter that much really.

However, I think MS controlling any kind of substantial part of the game industry via the games we consume will be detrimental in the long run, as MS don't care about games or gamers, they care about revenue control. If they did care they wouldn't be buying 1 company for $70bil, they'd open 200 studios making a variety of indie like to AAA games to bolster their GP catalogue so they aren't dependent on paying off 3rd parties. Something, not only, could governmental not get in the way of but would be a benefit to the industry as a whole.

I have nothing against Xbox and the competition it provides. I do, however, not like MS and it's influence and the way it throws money around.