It's not a good thing. I know getting Bethesda and AB will lead to more monopolies as MS will be more confident they can buy more. People cheering MS on to buy more like SEGA is asinine.

While it may not be the case anymore considering the current supreme court, there is a concept of law called stare decisis, meaning, it has been decided. Meaning that, once a ruling has been made, that ruling should apply to all other cases in that jurisdiction with the same facts. This is important because the law needs to be consistent for people to be able to conduct their business and lives. The same thing can't be legal one day and illegal the next (unless there are actually new laws passed). 

So, if a federal court decided that the Disney/NBC/Marvel/Lucas, whatever thing was not a violation of the antitrust act, then Microsoft should be able to rely on that when planning their deal. Then it would be upon the FTC to explain why this situation is different and the prior ruling should not apply. 

As for the point of the anti-trust act, I'm far from an expert, but I know a little bit. It doesn't simply mean that a company cannot become too big. It means a company cannot abuse their size to stifle competition, or to take unfair advantage of customers. In cases like this, it's really hard to make that case, because the value of the transaction is in intellectual property. There is theoretically an infinite supply of intellectual property. However big Microsoft is, there is still plenty of money around and plenty of brains. In theory, tons of companies can create the next Call of Duty, the next Spider-man, the next Star Wars, etc. I don't know if that is quite the case in reality though.

In my very humble opinion, the problem with the anti-trust act is that it was designed for a different world. It works somewhat well when you're dealing with physical commodities, or things that take up real space, or with some kind of resource with limited supply and demand. It just wasn't designed for massive media companies or digital companies and the like. I'm really not sure if the FTC has the power to deal with this kind of problem, if it is indeed a problem. We would really need new laws, and that's not likely if politicians like their funding.

Its because of GamePass mostly and Microsoft being seen as the most pro consumer platform holder at the moment.

I also think many feel that Sony is unlikely/unwilling/unable to spend, so nothing will be taken away from their platform of choice, while Microsoft will consume the entire industry and we'll be able to access GamePass through mobile phones or Smart TV's, on a cheap monthly fee, while still offering everything multiplatform, with no change to the status quo in the foreseeable future. 

In reality, this is mostly applauded by Xbox fans, but I think there is as much opposition to the adoration, that's not just coming from Sony fans. Massive consolidation is going to lead us to having less options on our platform of choice.

It's a good thing because at this point it's obvious that Microsoft has a hard time competing in the gaming space. If Sony is allowed to run away with it all by virtue of Microsoft's ineptitude and AAA third parties' refusal to put their games on Nintendo consoles, then it should be fully expected that Sony will try to pull off garbage. I've heard Sony has ten GaaS titles coming in the next three years and this type of game has a bad reputation for good reasons.

So the acquisition is good for PS gamers because Sony will have to make more games that people care about. Unless of course PS gamers have changed their minds about GaaS in the meantime.

It's good for Xbox gamers because of Game Pass. It's good for PC gamers too.

It's good for Nintendo gamers, at least for the few who care about CoD. Microsoft has been Nintendo's most friendly third party publisher when you exclude Japanese companies.

It's really only bad for Sony, the corporation, for the initially mentioned reason.

There are a lot of people who worry about the leverage Microsoft can get with this acquisition, but with the proposed ten year offers by Microsoft in place, we are talking about the PS7 era here before anything of note can happen. This is very far in the future in console time.

The entire conversation is also incredibly two-faced. People rally against Microsoft as if CoD is going to get pulled from PS (it can't be pulled from Nintendo anyway) - which it won't because of a mandatory ten year contract - but on the other hand they gladly take all the exclusivity deals that Sony makes to block games from coming to other consoles.

"Evil corporation bad, gamers must stand together against acquisitions."
"PS is getting one heavy hitter after another, recently it was Final Fantasy XVI."

thanks for this post, it was enlightening and also explains basically what i feared in the sense of stare decisis. 

i agree the anti-trust act is incredibly old. it definitely doesn't fit into how things work nowadays, which i guess is, in part, how so many of these massive acquisitions were able to happen.

unfortunately, lobbying is still the law of the land and i agree, nothing is going to change that. this lead me to being disappointed with this decision as i was hoping, possibly in vein, that the FTC would bring a good case and at least not let what happen in the movie industry happen to the gaming one.

It's a very good thing for gamers and developers alike. For developers it gives them the opportunity to take more risk cause there's a high Chance that some of the close to 30 million subscribers will try it and that's really good..for us gamers it allows those in poorer countries who can't always afford 70usd for new game to play it. This means more people will be converted to gamers as a result ..

i think you're possibly diminishing my argument more into one something someone who only is thinking in terms of a "gamer" mindset or whom still cares about console wars would seek to argue. this is not that. i don't care if Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, or the like get any positives out of this acquisition. also, sure, the consumer may benefit from the 10 year contracts MS has been writing but, despite what you're saying, 10 years is not really that long of a time and corporations love to find ways to be greedier at all costs.

maybe i should have proposed this as a more philosophical question. i don't think this acquisition is a good thing because i don't think any massive acquisition is a good thing. we've seen what happened in the movie and TV industries due to these acquisitions. even worse, we've seen what has happened to the beauty industry with L'Oreal owning almost everything and something like four enormous oligopolies owning some insane percentage of food and beverage companies.

i feel that people in this thread are being incredibly short-sighted here. none of these non-gaming industries started with four big companies owning everything, it all happened over time due to a slippery slope of allowing things like what we're seeing with MS and ABK now.

maybe some people just don't care about corporate greed or the lack of choice or maybe i'm just too anti-capitalist for this forum now but, i do care and it is certainly a red flag in my mind.

EDIT: the above also kind of goes to anyone else making the same arguments. i see what everyone who's making your same points is saying but, that's not really what i'm trying to get at. maybe i should've made that more clear in my OP that it's more about the philosophical/socialistic/future/whatever idk aspects.

It's good for those on a tight budget, that's about it. I really wish they didn't, because microsoft would have to step up their game and make great exclusives, which would have come along side these multiplats from activison blizzard. Sure microsofts got exclusives in the works, but there's less they have to worry about now.

there's no proper cause-to-effect link between this acquisition and what you try to portray.

- Expect more acquisitions

Expect more acquisitions even if the deals fail, there were acquisitions prior, there will be afterward no matter what. One acquisition, will not send the industry into a frenzy to do more of that, if the industry is doing so more than before that's because the economy is favorable to it.

- Game ownership to be phased out further

Fear-mongering, there's no reason to believe that would be true whatsoever and even fewer reasons to believe it would be related to this acquisition.

- Even more focus on live service, MTX, and season passes

Fear-mongering, Again no reason to believe any of that would be linked to this transaction's fate. The industry as a whole, and especially with competitive AAA is already as deep as it can in those ventures.

- Future game design to be even more based on stimulating addictive behavior

Based on what? and why is this transaction proving that more likely than otherwise?

- GP / PS+ Extra prices to go up more

The price of that service will go up no matter what, there's a thing called inflation. Other than that if X actor succeeds in raising its price that only means the value proposition supports the rise if not consumer will find an alternative.

- Less choice / more fragmented choice in the long run

the transaction's success will pretty much result in an increase in competition which means an increase in the value proposition. If X actor decides to deprive the consumer of choice that just leaves the door open for competition to better suit those consumer needs and benefits from the other shortcomings.

- Lower quality games

Again fear-mongering, no reason to believe game quality will be reduced, and if they are that is just an opportunity for innovative competition to rise.

Anyway that's what happened with tv and movies.

disagree totally, this appears more to me like a variant of 'The good old time was better' it wasn't, your memory just doesn't portray an accurate picture of what was.

What MS and AB are doing is a typical example of the corporate economy in action, in which patterns of economic activity are organized by the hands of bosses and managers, rather than one in which it emerges unplanned by the market's invisible hand. So questionable in essence, but also let's consider another point.

SIE has an operating income of about 10% of its revenues in a good year. Microsoft's business as a whole has operating incomes in the order of a whopping 40% of its revenue. Not because of Windows, as it used to be, but enterprise services that in essence function a lot like Gamepass.

One must be riding high in corporate hopium if they think Microsoft is spending massively in this business to make things more affordable for consumers in the long term...

But Sony buys exclu---shut up. That doesn't exculpate what MS is doing, neither it is being done by SIE anywhere on the same scale. That is just whataboutism and/or tu quoque, a very basic fallacy that children learn at a very early age.