Really frustrating to see online commenters speaking in favor of the acquisition (and prior MS buy ups) just because they are already locked into the Xbox ecosystem and they want games on Game Pass. Never mind that it’s objectively anti-consumer/anti-competitive and arguably bad for the industry broadly, it benefits a very specific subset of consumers so it must be good and the FTC / Sony are just haters. Complete lack of critical thinking.
I’ve heard some industry people aren’t pleased about these kind of late cycle whole-studio acquisitions either…think for example about Starfield devs who have already done the bulk of the work on their game and then have to A) shelve whatever work was done on PS versions B) throw their work onto a subscription model instead of pure sales while C) having to immediately generate profit to justify the purchase of Bethesda/Zenimax that they didn’t have any say in. Turning more and more studios into line items in a mega corp budget sheet.
Grim.
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…it’s really hard to see how that isn’t going down the road of ‘might makes right’ for consolidation in a lot of industries so long as you’ve got the money.
I don’t see at as “might makes right” but that blocking mergers in these types of situations is effectively protecting the market leader from competition. Which is the opposite of the goal for things like anti-trust issues.
Never mind that it’s objectively anti-consumer/anti-competitive…
I’m curious what you think is the anti-competitive aspect of this merger? Who is the competition that is being unfairly harmed by this merger?
Everyone brings up how ‘merger bad’, but they have these regulators for this exact reason, to determine if it is or isn’t anti-competitive.
It’s truly tragic and sad to helplessly watch the whole industry be consolidated by massive company’s. And now we are seeing the results as games have in general become so much less innovative and safe than historically.
I would usually agree with you, but in this specific case, ABK is such a shit company with awesome IPs that I’m just happy they’re being acquired by somebody else than Tencent.
And now we are seeing the results as games have in general become so much less innovative and safe than historically.
I don’t know if I would agree that Activision-Blizzard is the example to hold up for innovation and risk-taking in game development.