"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "
It’s not a “single” acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren’t going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.
Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.
Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn’t turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?
They’re 3rd place this generation mainly because they release one big exclusive per year, like Redfall, which turns out to be utter dogshit. It’s not because they don’t have an actual treasure trove of IP to draw from or a lack of development resources.
While Nintendo is putting out games like Tears of the Kingdom, Microsoft produces boring, samey, minorly iterative crap year after year. Halo and Gears went from being Xbox icons to unsurprising announcements at formulaic E3 press conferences, because Microsoft only seems to know how to beat dead horses.
Let me ask you this simple question: how have gamers or the industry benefited from Microsoft’s past acquisitions?
I can’t see any way that allowing Microsoft to own (and probably squander) an ever-growing library of IP is good for me or anyone outside of the company.
Gamers benefited tremendously. GamePass is a game changer and having access to day 1 first (and often 3rd) party releases is amazing. Devs are happy too. Many publicly admitted that without GP some of their games would not launch at all.
While you are right that MS has released mostly duds this generation, it’s not fair to paint them as completely without any benefits to gamers or industry.
