They really shouldn't be allowed to go through with this. Having a game console + game OS + game store + multiple big game studios shouldn't be acceptable to regulators. They're already screwing competitors by not releasing games from their studios on other platforms ( be it hardware, software or as a service platforms).
Vertical integration at those levels is only stifling competition.
While we're on the matter and competition regulators are looking at it, break them up.
Anti-trust hasn't been about competition for decades. The current jurisprudence is that it's all about prices and so long as companies swear prices will go down there's not much stopping mergers like this.
On the positive angle for now at least Microsoft is the company I'd prefer to be buying studios because they're not locking things down to exclusives and are nearly giving games away on Game Pass.
> The current jurisprudence is that it's all about prices and so long as companies swear prices will go down there's not much stopping mergers like this.
In the US*. And it's fairly stupid because there are no consequence when companies lie ( e.g. check AT&T / TimeWarner). However some other places, like the EU and UK, have much more practical competition-based rules. For instance, Alstom and Siemens weren't allowed to merge because they would have had near monopolies in some niches in some countries in the EU.
Games is one of the places where I think there's a low enough barrier to entry such that some of the classic antimonopoly economics kick in. There are wildly successful games from one person studios all the way up to the huge AAA developers.
I don't see a realistic argument here. For consoles, there are 3 healthy companies that match your description (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) so the vertical integration and exclusives don't seem to be supressing competition.
I'd actually go as far as to say that exclusives are the defining _feature_ of the console gaming market. If you eliminated exclusives - that is, if you could play any game on any console... Well, you just invented PC gaming.
Broken record: this is too far and shouldn’t be allowed to happen. I don’t understand how Microsoft has been able to even think they can approach this.
What’s the defense here? That there are still many game studios left to make games?
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 18.6 ms ] threadVertical integration at those levels is only stifling competition.
While we're on the matter and competition regulators are looking at it, break them up.
On the positive angle for now at least Microsoft is the company I'd prefer to be buying studios because they're not locking things down to exclusives and are nearly giving games away on Game Pass.
In the US*. And it's fairly stupid because there are no consequence when companies lie ( e.g. check AT&T / TimeWarner). However some other places, like the EU and UK, have much more practical competition-based rules. For instance, Alstom and Siemens weren't allowed to merge because they would have had near monopolies in some niches in some countries in the EU.
USA needs its Tencent.
I'd actually go as far as to say that exclusives are the defining _feature_ of the console gaming market. If you eliminated exclusives - that is, if you could play any game on any console... Well, you just invented PC gaming.
What’s the defense here? That there are still many game studios left to make games?