cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1354224
Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard may go ahead in the United States, as Judge Corley sees no danger of harming competition.
The issue here is simple. MS is not the market leader. They constantly lag behind all of its competitors in this market in sales and quality.
Instead of letting the market decide the winner, MS is opening up its wallet and purchasing the largest video game company in the US and EU to make sure that it’s more talented competition does not have access to any of those games past the current hardware generation.
They are using their massive amount of capital earned in unrelated businesses to do monopolistic business behavior. MS only got this passed because the US government is bought and paid for.
I’ll be honest, as much as I dislike consolidation by mega corporations, AvB is such a garbage company that I feel like the only fix is a complete change of ownership, and MS is the only one big enough.
So, my understanding of this is that people are concerned that this acquisition is going to kill off competition?
I’m failing to see how. Call of Duty (imo) is a series that’s due for the shelf and a new IP should take its place. I’m not a person who would call them a quality game at this point. There is Diablo 4 and also World of Warcraft where I could see them expanding the consumer base.
I’m probably missing something, but I really don’t see the big issue with this one.
Call of Duty sells millions of copies each release. AB will have to go under before they shelf it.
But the issue is exactly that. Come the PS6, there will be no more COD games for non Xbox systems (MS carefully worded their announcement to say that they’d keep releasing COD for the PS5 and made no mention of other consoles). This could severely harm the future sales of Sony due to lessened competition. And while idgaf about the profits of these massive companies, having less competition is worse overall for everyone involved.
