Really frustrating to see online commenters speaking in favor of the acquisition (and prior MS buy ups) just because they are already locked into the Xbox ecosystem and they want games on Game Pass. Never mind that it’s objectively anti-consumer/anti-competitive and arguably bad for the industry broadly, it benefits a very specific subset of consumers so it must be good and the FTC / Sony are just haters. Complete lack of critical thinking.
I’ve heard some industry people aren’t pleased about these kind of late cycle whole-studio acquisitions either…think for example about Starfield devs who have already done the bulk of the work on their game and then have to A) shelve whatever work was done on PS versions B) throw their work onto a subscription model instead of pure sales while C) having to immediately generate profit to justify the purchase of Bethesda/Zenimax that they didn’t have any say in. Turning more and more studios into line items in a mega corp budget sheet.
Grim.
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…it’s really hard to see how that isn’t going down the road of ‘might makes right’ for consolidation in a lot of industries so long as you’ve got the money.
I don’t see at as “might makes right” but that blocking mergers in these types of situations is effectively protecting the market leader from competition. Which is the opposite of the goal for things like anti-trust issues.
You are spouting absolute nonsense. I don’t have a current gen xbox nor do I have any interest in game pass. I don’t even give a fuck about CoD or Blizzard’s games. My reasoning is mostly wanting to see Bobby Kotick removed and this is the most likely means of seeing that happen.
Secondarily Activision seems content to sit on a mountain of IP and never use it and instead milks a small handful of IPs into burnout. Microsoft has its problems but they’re generally the lesser evil in this respect and have explicitly stated their intention to bring back a lot of IPs that Activision has let languish.
This merger benefits most people who are into video games, not a “very specific subset of consumers”. If anything the consumers this “hurts” is a specific subset, people exclusively interested in Sony hardware. Since Xbox, Sony, and Activision all release games on PC anyway.
As for anti-competitive, Xbox’s been in “3rd place” for ages. I even have my doubts that after having bought Activision that they’ll turn out a significant gain.
Never mind that it’s objectively anti-consumer/anti-competitive…
I’m curious what you think is the anti-competitive aspect of this merger? Who is the competition that is being unfairly harmed by this merger?
Everyone brings up how ‘merger bad’, but they have these regulators for this exact reason, to determine if it is or isn’t anti-competitive.
It’s truly tragic and sad to helplessly watch the whole industry be consolidated by massive company’s. And now we are seeing the results as games have in general become so much less innovative and safe than historically.
I would usually agree with you, but in this specific case, ABK is such a shit company with awesome IPs that I’m just happy they’re being acquired by somebody else than Tencent.
And now we are seeing the results as games have in general become so much less innovative and safe than historically.
I don’t know if I would agree that Activision-Blizzard is the example to hold up for innovation and risk-taking in game development.