There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even.
They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.
Isn’t that the point? Why can something as large as MS have a “division” that can go into mergers and acquisitions as if they were a separate entity?
> There are stills lots of other large publishers
…goes on to name 5.
> They are definitely not “buying all their competit
Sure, you can be as pedantic as you want and jump through hoops to come to that rationalization.
And I guess you can question my use of the subjective word "lots", my fault. I still think there are _enough_ large publishers around in the gaming industry that you can't really start throwing around terms like "monopoly" or "anti-trust" etc...
I was mostly just pointing out that the original comment was factually inaccurate by saying MS were buying up "all their competitors".
I'm not trying to rationalize or "jump through hoops" here. We're all just debating and guessing, having a conversation..
If you somehow accidentally assigned me to the opposite 'side' from the one you appear to be on, let me gently correct you.. I don't care enough about this to be picking sides.
Especially when Microsoft is using the rest of Microsoft to subsidize said "division"
You said Tencent twice ;)
If you are referring to anti-trust laws preventing this, then MS would need to be buying a huge number of companies to monopolize the gaming market, not just Activision, in order to be in violation of this law.
They can "ask" gaming companies to use Azure if they want to run on Windows or Xbox. They can ignore Mac and PlayStation as platforms. They can bundle software licenses, payment gateways, and design hardware that only works in one ecosystem.
This is the modern monopoly. Good luck competing with it or avoiding their platform fees as you try to grow your revenue. You'll undoubtably wind up feeding your direct competition somehow or another.
> They can wield this power to force deals and push out competitors across their multiple business units.
The only way this would matter is if you can prove that they have some monopoly in any one market and use that monopoly position to drive up prices.
So if somehow could leverage their Windows OS as to sell games for 1000$ rather then 100$.
Microsoft does not have monopoly in any one market as far as I can tell.
One party want to sell, the other wants to buy. As long as the deal doesn't breach any anti-trust laws, it's good to go.
Either there would need to be some revolution with the legal profession, or congress would have to pass some new law.
What the judges realized is that by an more open definition pretty much any company and any merger could be said to be against anti-trust.
So if you want such a law, you need to actually get some exact definition of how every is judged that can be consistently legally applied.
But overall even though it's a big acquisition both together will still remain one amongst a few big gaming companies.
