Bring back anti-trust regulations. Microsoft has been trying to acquire anything they can get their hands on, and really should be dismantled on principle.
No it's good! It'll give them twice the power to make games and it'll be better! They totally won't just sit there with their monopoly, monopolies are good! Plus we still have Sony. Wait they want to buy Sony too? Even better!
I was watching this video this morning, and he points out how these leaks show a pattern of Microsoft basically wanting to buy up all of gaming (I also liked how he called Microsoft’s whole way of think about buying Nintendo as a bit of American imperialism). Folks like their Game Pass and don’t like Nintendo not giving a damn about trends or multiplayer or whatever and just going along doing their own thing, and think it would be a great idea for Microsoft to own them, and…no. Just, no.
This was before ABK, in fact around Zenimax acquisition time. After the excruciating process of ABK's acquisition which also brought us highly costly leak, I think they won't dare to buy a big player for now and no regulator would let that happen given it would be a horizontal acquisition if I understand that correctly.
The recent actiblizz situation has shown that Microsoft can do whatever they want, and no regulator will stop them. No regulator currently has teeth or a want to stop any aspect of big business, especially not tech. Thinking a regulator will say no to anything at this point is wishful at beat.
I mean it's still stuck and CMA may still block it for all we know. Regulators definitely made them go through hoops for this one and it there's a next one it'll probably not go well after this.
So I would like to be on board with this. But if you look at every single regulator who even double taked, it was all about cloud. They don't care about consolidation of media and they have no intention of stopping it.
I think they cared about it, saw the numbers, and realised the case can't be made because of the current way market is setup. CMA initially wasn't convinced but with correct calculations it got resolved. FTC actually didn't make a big point over cloud but that this could destroy PlayStation, which also wasn't justifiable with data. EU held similar opinions but felt it also is pro competitive given the number of IPs Sony holds.
But after ABK, I don't think that case can be made anymore. With ABK the number of IPs and content becomes more competitive with PS and Nintendo, and they all kept saying this is a vertical merger, Nintendo or Sony wouldn't, and thus wouldn't be allowed.