That's exactly what prompted the FTC to challenge the case as much as they did and, they've been pretty much proven wrong in all their assessment. 

No actor is there for your benefit, on that we agree although no company can simply take consumer money for nothing so they are incentivized to provide a good value proposition at the very least and the more there is competition the more this becomes true.

Sony is free to try and buy whoever they want, that's the principle behind a free market. To prevent someone from exercising this right takes serious and compelling evidence of harm, not just an anti-big-tech sentiment.

The vast majority of neutral third-party entities applauded this acquisition proposal, you can even see that in the CMA file, pretty much all industry experts were adamant this deal would pass and were baffled by FTC and CMA's decision. Worker and worker unions pleaded for the deal to pass. 

So in reality, I have not seen credible opposition outside Xbox detractors while neutral actors were mostly pro.

It must not be that basic if you missed the fact that whataboutism is not a fallacy if it is justified and appropriate. Also, I love how many like to pretend ethics in video games are decided by what Sony does or doesn't and on what scale they do, and besting them at their game = bad.

Nobody is delusional in thinking MS's actions are not about the expansion of its business the question has always been can the market support such an expansion and the very basic fact that the result would not provide MS even with the top spot in any metrics you can look at tell you there is no serious concern of SLC and it won't create a context where MS can act monopolistic and screw consumer over unchallenged.

I'm not personally a fan of this sort of publisher consolidation, but it's a business move that MS needs to make to remain competitive. it does make the rush towards consolidation more attractive now, but we'll have to see how that plays out.

I'm sorry, but this sort of underlying 'gaas is bad' is always going to be a pretty laughable comment considering how popular GaaS titles actually are right now in the gaming space. 

We do already know that SP output from Sony is not decreasing. And GaaS titles are clearly being designed to help Sony confidently put money into the growing costs of AAA games in an era where consolidation is taking away more options for them and their consumers (which leads to less money for them). 

when you mean vertical merger as opposed to a horizontal one, are you saying this because ABK are a developer/publisher and not a console manufacturer? or some other reason?

i also would like to refer you to what i edited the OP with:

"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."

markets don't have to start out as an oligopoly in order to become one, but i'm sure you know that. i also would like to call into question your stimulating competition point. if by stimulating competition, you mean stimulating the competition to acquire more companies and slide closer to oligopolies, i would agree. though, i think you mean it another way. 

also, i think your comment regarding anti-competitive behavior in an IP world is definitely interesting. JWeinCom brought this up as well. do you not think our anti-trust laws are just outdated so that they don't properly serve IP, or do you not think it's possible to ever directly impact other actors in an IP-related market due to the matter of what it is? because i think we already see a case of this in other industries, such as the ones i've already brought up.

in the end, i'll use an example to try to relay my point. let's say a market has four large players that own 81% of the entire market share due to acquisition. decades before the present day, these four actors only made up 51% of the market. i don't want to spell out what that would do to a market because i believe you already know but, do you not have a problem with that?

I mean, of course you wouldn't find Xbox detractors on neutral third parties, that would defeat the purpose and potentially be a conflict of interest. 

My post was more so about the many video game forums such as ResetEra, GAF, IB, and VGChartz, where its clear its not only Sony fans who are opposed to this deal. We have Nintendo fans in this very thread who are opposing this deal being good for the industry. 

Microsoft put more of their games on Steam than Activision do. As a Steam user, this deal stands to benefit me. Maybe I'll finally get to buy Crash Bandicoot 4!

I personally see the ABK acquisition as a good thing, but not for the reasons you'd might expect.  The reality is that the video game industry is extremely difficult to control.  Microsoft could also acquire EA, Ubisoft and Take Two as well and it would have short term victories at best.  If you look at the history of console gaming, this is what actually happened when one company had "total control".

NES era -  The NES had a monopoly on video games including third party publishers.  But the video game industry was growing at the time, so this just enticed more players into the market during the 16 era.  Third party games did not stay exclusively with Nintendo for long.

PS2 era - The PS2 competed with DC, GCN and XBox and sold over 2.5 times the other three systems combined.  The PS2's game library demolished the game library of any competing system.  Surely the Playstation would have an eternal monopoly right?  Wrong.  Instead, Nintendo tries an entirely different approach to gaming with the Wii, while Microsoft competes hard to get lots of third party games with the XBox360.  The PS2's domination lead to increased competition in the 7th generation just like the NES's domination lead to increased competition in the 16 bit era.  The more powerful a company is, the more they inspire the competition to step up their game.

Nintendo handhelds - The true monopoly.  Nintendo has never been bested in the handheld space.  And yet, Nintendo has never rested on their laurels and just done the easy thing when it came to handheld gaming.  Instead this monopoly lead to the Switch.  Somehow, a handheld monopoly lead to an increase in innovation.  This is because their worst handheld system was the 3DS, which lost half the customer base that the DS had.  The 3DS's biggest competitor wasn't the Vita.  It was disinterest in dedicated device handheld gaming as a whole. While Nintendo was winning against Sony, they were losing against disinterest.  They had to step up their game with the Switch, because they weren't making good money with the 3DS (or the Wii U).

So, going back the the ABK acquisition, we have a third place competitor, Microsoft, acquiring a gigantic third party publisher.  Ideally, this will give them an advantage over Sony and that is a good thing.  Why?  Because Sony is already increasing their first party efforts and they have been for a while.  They will have to continue to improve their first party offerings to compete with Microsoft.  This is similar to what has happened to Nintendo in the past.  They were shut out of a lot of third party support, and so they seriously invested into their first party efforts.  All of this is GREAT for the consumer.

In fact, this acquisition may lead Gamepass to be a very successful platform.  This will cause Sony, and maybe Nintendo, to come up with competing platforms to appeal to consumers.  Or maybe someone will double down on physical media as an alternative?  Regardless, it means the gaming space becomes more competitive.  Who wins?  The consumer wins.  When companies compete, the consumer wins.

In short, the ABK acquisition is a good thing, because it is a pro consumer move.  It means Sony will be at a disadvantage, and they will have to step up their game, which will help the consumer.  In the past, one company's domination has only lead to increased efforts and innovation from the competition.  If the ABK acquisition makes Sony nervous, then that will only lead to better options for the consumer in the future.

Nobody in this thread has come close to convincing me that this acquisition is a bad thing in any meaningful way.

The problem is many people buy into the notion that Microsoft needs this acquisition to become competetive with Sony, when it all honesty at this point they've basicly chosen not to compete on consoles sales (latest case in point increasing the price of the Series X while they're already far behind). They're much more concerned with having the biggest subscription service and with becoming a ubiquitious actor in the industry who is not just on Xbox, but also PC, mobile and even their competing platforms. The truth is they don't need to sell more consoles than Sony to make more revenue than them and that's (understandably) what they're much more concerned with. This deal won't place Xbox anywhere near first in console sales, but it will arguably give them the biggest collection of IPs and franchises of any actor in the gaming space.

If their main goal had actually been to sell more systems, a better approach both for themselves and consumers would have been to strengthen their current studios or build new ones that are actually allowed to make exclusives instead of spending 70 bil on a developer whose games were already on their platform. All we really get are some more games on Game Pass, but they could have easily made a deal with ActiBliz for a much, much smaller amount to do the same. And that's exactly my main problem with acquisition, massive amounts of money being thrown around not to create something new but just for something that already exists to change hands. I get it, it's an easier and safer than building something new, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.