The FTC Gets Steamrolled Again, Can’t Pause The Microsoft Activision Deal Before Appeal::The FTC failed to land an injunction pausing the deal, something that Microsoft and Activision both said may kill it, but the opposite result now means the acquisition…
Yes. it is bad for the consumer.
Microsoft is the company that started the whole Embrace, Extend and Extinguish thing to get where it is. Activision aren’t exactly saints either.
basically, what the merger is going to allow them to do is continue to produce subpar games and focus instead on just getting rid of the competition rather than producing decent games. neither studio really has had any new IP. Neither has done anything really innovative in the space.
I don’t want the video game industry to turn into an oligopoly, but I see your point of the impact of competition on the quality of games. There is a need for competition, but being a big company doesn’t garantee good games, which is demonstrated by Battlebit vs Redfall and Hyper Scape.
I admit that I cannot expect Activision-Blizzard to compete with Microsoft at the state they are, so there is no point denying that acquisition for that reason. However, maybe small developers would have more chance to succeed and take ABK market shares if there is no acquisition.
I differentiate between Microsoft and Xbox tbh. Everybody in the video game industry is scummy af. Microsoft - in context of the video game industry - is not better or worse than SONY and Nintendo and such. But I obviously agree with you for Microsoft the software company.