Layoffs may happen, but them not buying any talent would mean they'll fire all developers. If you are unironically suggesting that you need a serious reality check. Wtf would names help them without any development workforce? And why wouldn't there be any kind of corporate culture change among the employees who aren't getting layed off? Would the harassment and all the other stuff they got sued over keep getting ignored and swept under the rug?

You are saying that you think that ABK will just not make any games anymore.

Speaking of trying to define someone as naive, you look to be naively thinking this post does not make you look like an internet troll making an attempt at flaming.

And just to show how evident your flaming attempt is this is the supposed "long ass" post with only 1 sentence pertaining to the corporate culture at MS.

But maybe it's not flaming and you really thought my comment was that long. after all, coming from someone that made a 6-word-long factually wrong post that I was supposed to extrapolate into a non-disclosed post-merger layoff intention presented as unavoidable and factual but with no basis or logic,  You must have thought my 1 sentence was akin to a new Georges R.R. Martin book.

you know making an argument that relies extensively on extrapolation is also a fallacy called Logical Fallacy of Unwarranted Extrapolation or it may also be Logical Fallacy of Innuendo which "occurs when a conclusion is suggested to be true without directly stating the point".

and also by suggesting I'm slow and calling me naive you of course again use  Ad hominem fallacy.

The most clueless post in this thread.

You are right that government courts are also a problem. But, that's a different conversation. 

It ridiculous to say that I would be okay with slavery making a return. That's what you are supporting: Government controlling things, even though the institution has an incredibly bad track record, is responsible for the vast majority of human suffering both now and throughout history, and has been part and parcel of essentially all widespread slavery issues in human history. And, in fact, when you claim that rights exist that impose obligations on other people, you are supporting slavery.  It is impossible to have a right to a job, or a right to money, or a right to a big check on your way out of a job, without requiring other people to give you those things. If that's not slavery, I don't know what is. 

As for me, I'm definitely not rich, nor have I ever stayed in a shitty job. When the job sucks, I leave it. I've been a union member, son of a union organizer, a small business owner that's had the same employees for many years, in an area with an extremely competitive job market. Employees stay with me because I treat them well. I treat them well because if I don't, they will leave.  Plus it's the right thing to do.  But, you better believe that I'll fire you on a heartbeat if you are a drag on the company. The good people that have worked with me for years shouldn't be asked to carry dead weight simply because it sucks when you lose your job.

Tbf...Microsoft have said repeatedly over the past year or so that this deal is largely about mobile, haha. It's not hard to believe them either, over the past two years, 36%-47% of ABK's revenue has came from mobile, it is the fastest growing segment and the largest, it is also an area where Microsoft has almost zero foothold in, I think even Activision-Blizzard only accounts for something in the low single digits of the mobile market.

Though since COD Warzone, Diablo Immortal and Candy Crush are F2P, they can't do much for Game Pass. They need mobile studios who can take their IPs and build native mobile experiences on the side of the console experiences, Microsoft has largely failed to do that so far, they tried with stuff like Forza Street and Gears Pop but they all died quickly.

The issue with xCloud is nobody really wants to play Halo Infinite on mobile with an awkward controller overlay slapped on-top of the screen, Lol. That is one of the things that Phil mentioned in emails as well. Also this just reminded me that xCloud still doesn't have K&M support on PC...Another advantage for GeForce Now. Nvidia really comes out the the best in this for Cloud Gaming, Imo...

It has very little to benefit us as console /pc players, but mobile players stand to gain from an increase in competition in that much more consolidated market.

That's another area where I take issue with the previous CMA decision, they balanced the cons seen in the cloud market to the goods it may bring to consumers of GamePass while they did make any mention of the potential benefits from any, not even a slight, increase in the console market competitiveness and more importantly also did not contrast it with the benefits of challenging the established duopoly in mobile space where MS is one of the only very few entities that could even think of tackling that task.

As for Xbox shifting some focus to Mobile, it very well might happen and by all mean it is happening with this transaction, after that, I think furthering that venture will happen the same way it happened with ABK, through further acquisition, expansion, and contractual development agreement with 3rd party. The thing is, you don't necessarily want to retool and reskill established talented individuals at your studio while they are still making good output in a still lucrative market so other options will be preferred.

Yes, that's why I think games will change to be more easily played on Mobile devices. Simplified controls or mobile friendly spin-offs. You can indeed not take current games with their dozens of button inputs and complex UIs with tons of small text and play them comfortably on mobile. The question is, will they bring out a snap on controller for mobile play or go for maximum reach by simplifying the controls to work on all phones without any barrier of entry.

xCloud will be improved, but it's indeed pointless atm if you have a Series console or decent PC. Unless you want to play FS2020 on XOne. Is FS2020 on Geforce Now btw? It's definitely a lot cheaper for me to run it there instead of buying a new gaming laptop just to revisit one game. Plus the storage space required, terrible installer with large monthly updates and patches and up to 200 mbps data streaming needed to get max photogrammetry detail make FS2020 the perfect candidate. Streaming the game would require at most 50mbps, while running it locally can spike up to 200mbps. But running it on xCloud is indeed no improvement.

The CMA seems fine now with splitting off cloud streaming for the UK. So for the console and mobile space it's all fine.

Anyway I see no benefit for me in this deal. If XBox diverts attention to mobile, means even less chance for MS to get interested in VR. Sony is off chasing the live service dream, a dozen of those in the works vs nothing for PSVR2 afaik. Plus with MS' zero interest in VR, VR ports of ABK games are definitely off the table, just like Skyrim will most likely not come to PSVR2 now, definitely not Starfield. Nintendo lost interest as well, BotW had an experimental VR mode but TotK dropped it. Of course Nintendo could still do something with Switch 2.

But such is life with big corporations. Mobile and GAAS is where the (new) money is.

For me, it's mainly about the money. I game on a very tight budget, and Gamepass is by far the best value in gaming. I have managed to keep my Gamepass sub going entirely with Microsoft Rewards points earned by using my Xbox and using Bing as my search engine instead of Google, so I have managed to go 3 years into this generation spending less than $700 on Xbox, $500 for my Series X, $130 on 2 day one games that weren't on Gamepass that I really wanted to play day one (Cyberpunk and Hogwarts Legacy), and the rest on some cheap digital sale games. ABK Games being added to Gamepass further increases it's already incredible value for me.

More than that though, Xbox is in 3rd place and they could really use the boost that ABK will bring them to help close some of the gap with Nintendo and Sony. Xbox in a stronger position in terms of marketshare can only mean good things for Xbox gamers, Xbox ports of games become more likely to be made, Sony and Nintendo timed exclusivity deals become more expensive for them to make due to needing to compensate the publishers for more lost Xbox sales, etc. With Xbox where it is currently at in terms of marketshare, being an Xbox owner feels like being a 3rd class passenger or something, we constantly live in fear of a game we want to play not being ported to Xbox or being hatted as an exclusive by Sony (or even sometimes Nintendo). The ABK deal is really a win-win for all Xbox owners as it will help to remedy this issue. 

Lastly, it could mean a much better ABK. The work culture at ABK has been toxic for years, they are in bad need to reorganization and fresh management. Blizzard is badly bloated and in bad need to reorganization (they have more developers than all Xbox Game Studios and Zenimax studios combined at just Blizzard, and yet the games they currently have active and the new smaller IP they are making, don't need anywhere near that number of developers, they are particularly bloated in terms of oversized middle management according to former Blizzard devs). Phil has already indicated plans to stop yearly CoD releases over at Activision meanwhile, which would mean they pretty much only need the 4 core CoD studios (Treyarch, Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, and Raven), since each team would have 6 years instead of 3 years to make CoD games. So not only will those longer dev cycles for each CoD result in higher quality CoD releases, the other Activision studios like Beenox and Toys for Bob could go back to working on their own games more often instead of constantly being taken off of their own games to crunch out yearly CoD releases; those smaller studios being freed up can only mean good things for IP's like Crash, Spyro/Skylanders, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, there is even a possibility of a new Guitar Hero happening under Xbox, or a revival of Prototype, which would never have happened under Bobby Kotick and his overreliance on the CoD milking machine.

"Anyway I see no benefit for me in this deal"

Yes, and that's perfectly fine, the deal never was going to please everyone and his not perfect for me either I see many cons to it. On a personal note, there might be bad and there might be pros, we might be for or against it, and to that extent we can use every generality/singled out property we see fit.

But it's completely another thing to say it should be blocked or allowed, that should 100% be based on the ins and outs of the transaction itself and its impact on the relevant market under the current laws, and not idealistic ones, with fairness in regards to how similar case has been adjudicated in the past.

The separation between the 2 concepts is hard to make sometimes and tends to be mixed together. I tend to focus much on the latter while public forum will, of course, tend to focus on the former, but focusing on the latter is the only way to remove oneself from the equation (not that I pretend to do that perfectly, but I try and I'm open to challenge if someone thinks my personal opinion was at play in my argument then we could debate if that's amounts to anything and readjust).

Agreed, but I'm still of the opinion that consolidation is bad for creativity in general. As well as infrastructure and content creation should remain separated. That's how we ended up with walled gardens in the first place. MS is basically working on the next walled garden, subscription + cloud infrastructure + content. If only MSX had caught on in the USA history could have been very different. Yet Nintendo showed, convenience trumps versatility.