I don’t understand what we did to deserve someone as great as Lina Khan. Makes me a tiny bit hopeful that things could continue in this direction.
Well I want this deal to go through so I can get AB games on Game Pass. I don’t see this as hurting consumers at all. It only hurts the #1 leader Sony, and I don’t even think it hurts them very much.
I’d love to hear the FTC’s explanation of how this comes anywhere close to meeting the threshold if they do kill the deal.
Hurting Sony is good in my book.
I hope that if this is blocked, we see more consistent application of antitrust legislation in the future.
This being blocked, but the Disney purchase of Fox going through seems very inconsistent.
I don’t see how more anti-consumer this is compared to that purchase.
Let’s say this is blocked. Is there anything stopping AB and MS from making a deal afterwards that essentially puts everything into MS’s hands, then retry this deal years down the road. Then much of the reason for blocking (from Sony’s viewpoint) would not exist anymore.
Is that still ‘anti-competitive’? Companies make exclusivity deals all the time.
Oh, they wouldn’t do it, because AB would lose too much going that route, but I’m curious if it’s possible. I don’t know the rules around this kind of thing.
Sure, they can make whatever exclusivity deal they want. Thing is, Sony will have the opportunity to bid against it.
Sony had an opportunity to try and buy Activision as well.
They did indeed, not that it pertains to the discussion at hand with government regulation.
Microsoft apparently offered Sony a 10 year deal for COF but don’t turned it down, possibly because they kind of want to use the franchise as a legal argument.
Sony’s response is completely logical once you game it out. Their end goal is to stop the sale, CoD isn’t Activision’s only franchise just its biggest one.
Yes, their complaints about CoD are simply a ploy to try and disrupt competition.
CoD bros should just be buying an Xbox anyways. It’s imperative that Sony gets fucked here. This is the beautiful future.
No.45
Heh, well, what they said is a little different. They said even if all Call of Duty players on Playstation switched over to Xbox, Playstation would still have a commanding lead as far as consoles. Of course, it’s a long document, maybe they’re interpreting one of the other stats they presented, there were a number of them, but that’s the one that stood out in my mind. The actual Sony lead in that scenario, like everything else in the document, is scissor percent.
Call of Duty is not replicable. Call of Duty is too entrenched for any rival, no matter how well equipped, to catch up. It has been the top-selling game for almost every year in the last decade and, in the first-person shooter (‘FPS’) genre, it is overwhelmingly the top-selling game. Other publishers do not have the resources or expertise to match its success. To give a concrete example, Electronic Arts — one of the largest third-party developers after Activision — has tried for many years to produce a rival to Call of Duty with its Battlefield series. Despite the similarities between Call of Duty and Battlefield — and despite EA’s track record in developing other successful AAA franchises (such as FIFA , Mass Effect , Need for Speed , and Star Wars: Battlefront) — the Battlefield franchise cannot keep up. As of August 2021, more than 400 million Call of Duty games had been sold, while Battlefield had sold just 88.7 million copies.”
Sony throwing shade on Battlefield
Translation: We have made an ton of money with this, and it is our gawd-given right to keep making tons of money.
I expected people to applaud the buyout because they’re on Game Pass, it’s an amazing deal already, and they want it to get even more games. The same sort of way lots were happy about T-mobile zero-rating Netflix, where they either didn’t think it through or concluded they don’t give a shit and just wanted to stream media on their commutes.
Surprised how many people are rabidly anti-Sony in here. Or is it pro-MS? I didn’t expect to see so much tribalism.
Anyway, I’ve never owned a Sony gaming console, I’ve owned several Xboxen, I’m subscribed to Game Pass, and I’m strongly against the purchase being permitted. Consolidation is always bad. The more players in the market, any market, the better.
I honestly don’t think it’s either. To me it’s mostly come across as eyerolling at Sony clutching pearls. Which is a very different thing than being anti-Sony.
I tend to agree with this, although I’m wary of using words like always or never. :) What’s weird to me is that this is the case that might have issues? Not the dozens of other mega-acquisitions over the past 20 years? Seems like a weird place to draw the line. I’m not opposed to this merger being blocked (although personally it would be good in the short term due to Game Pass) but I’m a little annoyed at the FTC being asleep at the wheel and only deciding to wake up for video games of all things.