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Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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If you felt like you had to buy both consoles, that means the market got more competitive.
Competition means there's choice. Segregating titles that were once across multiple platforms (choice) into individual platforms (no choice) is anti-competitive.
I can't really break it down more than that and I thought this was obvious...
You do have choice. You have choice between group of exclusives A and group of exclusives B. It's better for competition but worse for the consumer. In order for it to be better for the consumer and competition, you'd need to eliminate the concept of exclusives entirely. And I'm all for that, but I don't know how to make that happen.
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Well since exclusives will continue to exist, imagine if, hear me out here, third party titles remained cross platform and group B developed their own set of games at worst through infant studio acquisitions instead of, idk, acquiring the second largest third party publisher in the world (and thus all their studios).
Then that would be decidedly less competitive between the two consoles.
Yeah the poor trillion dollar company couldn't possibly compete with the billion dollar company by organically building an attractive portfolio. It's not like they did it before and only lost their position due to their own mishandling of studios and misunderstanding of the market.
They seemingly can't compete, so this is how they're making up for the ground that they lost, because right now the console market is not particularly competitive.
Not when there was a whole ecosystem of platform neutral third-party publishers and additional exclusives are taken out of that. You are not getting more and new games, you are just being required to buy an additional device for the same games. How could it be more competitive if the market is consolidated into less companies?
Because a third party publisher is a supplemental actor to a console market when they make games for both platforms. If the one getting its ass kicked makes those games more scarce on its competitor's console, it becomes more difficult for you, the consumer, to choose one, which means the market got more competitive. Or you buy both, which means both competitors (Nintendo doesn't really count here) are healthy for each getting your sale. If your default answer was to buy a PlayStation and to hell with Xbox, that's less competitive.
The third party video game market is in no danger of monopolizing, on the other hand. Ubisoft/EA/ActiBlizz/Take Two all put their eggs in fewer and fewer baskets, and now the Devolver Digitals, Anna Purnas, TinyBuilds, Focus Homes, Paradoxes, and Embracers of the world are growing to fill the market voids those big publishers left by putting out fewer games.
Absolutely not. Splitting up the market between mutually exclusive options is not competition, it is cartel tactics. Competition doesn't happen only at the console-maker level, it involves all gaming companies.
Before if I wanted to play certain games I could choose to buy from ActiBlizz and Microsoft or ActiBlizz and Sony or ActiBlizz and Nintendo. Now I can only buy from Microsoft period. There aren't even more games. There is less choice, less competition.
You shouldn't get too comfortable with what Microsoft is doing this just because as a game company it's in third place. Don't forget that in size, overall, Microsoft is larger than Sony and Nintendo combined, several times. It's not even the first time they do it, they did it to Zenimax/Bethesda too.
Sure I do hope that other smaller publishers grow to take that space, but will that space even be available, considering your suggestion that people might choose to buy a XBox and play those same games?
It's how everyone in the market is competing in a bunch of different spaces, like streaming services. It's still increased competition, even if it sucks. And I do think the market would be worse with one high-end console than two.
I'm not comfortable with it. I'm just less comfortable with Sony having such a wide lead in a market with only one other competitor, and given that exclusives are how Sony made that lead, exclusives are how Microsoft is closing it. It doesn't matter how much bigger Microsoft is. Their success comes from other markets, and they're one of only three companies making a console, so that market can't really afford to lose a company in that race unless we're willing to lose consoles altogether. (The way PC gaming is trending, one day we might be, but that's optimistic.)
I don't follow you. Smaller third party publishers are thriving and growing, and they're multiplatform. The larger publishers are shrinking their year-on-year offerings and looking for buyers, of which there are few that can afford such a purchase.
It absolutely matters how much bigger Microsoft is, that's why it can pull moves like this to begin with. It's also short-sighted to think that it's healthier for Microsoft to approach Sony in such a manner when it comes at expense of the options customers have. The competitiveness of a market is not solely defined by how close the head-to-head is between the 3 biggest console makers. Seems like people are confusing market dynamics with the Console War, which is itself just a marketing gimmick that got ingrained into gamers' heads.
Good for you though that there are two high-end consoles. I don't see why you talk like there would be just one. Microsoft is not going bankrupt. But maybe, rather than letting Microsoft buy their way to the top as if that was any semblance of healthy competition, maybe you should question why they aren't making more appealing games with the studios they already had. Nintendo doesn't need to buy Ubisoft to be competitive, and in fact they can make games alongside them without any acquisition.
Comes to mind now. Why did you even bother couch that mention of consoles with "high-end"? Underpowered as it may be, Nintendo is competing in the same market. We know that there are people who forgo Horizon to buy Zelda. Sure it's better to have three console-makers competing than two, but here we have proof that there are ways to compete without acquisition, even when by all accounts your offering is the "weakest".
Frankly I don't see what you are getting at with this. That there are other third-party publishers doesn't change that the third-party market is diminished by ActiBlizz's acquisition. Devolver and Annapurna may be lovely, but they don't have the size and output to replace it. Sounds like you are just downplaying ActiBlizz's importance as if we didn't just have a massive, long-awaited multiplatform release that is Diablo 4.
And so what if large publishers are looking for buyers? They shouldn't be allowed to sell, consolidation is bad for the industry. They can just deal with it and keep making games. even if Nintendo were to go and buy Ubisoft, it would still be bad for us.
Microsoft isn't in danger of going bankrupt, but they won't stay in a space where they don't make any money.
I separated them into high end consoles because if Xbox leaves the market, there would only be one console capable of running the latest Assassin's Creed or Street Fighter or what have you. That would effectively be a monopoly in that space.
I mentioned other third party publishers because you seemed to be under the impression that the third party space is under threat for losing one player. It's a large player, for sure, but that space is very healthy.
If you're concerned with the size of Microsoft just in general, which absolutely makes sense, because they're enormous, what happened in today's news is that the FTC failed to prevent the acquisition based on the evidence for this market. Their next course of action will be to see if Microsoft should be broken up after the fact under anti trust, and if that happens, as a non expert, I'll wager the gaming department stays together as one entity.
Microsoft creates demand for their system largely by buying up publishers and turning all their future games exclusive, that would otherwise have been multiplatform.
Sony and Nintendo create demand for their system largely by making great games in house, that otherwise never would have existed.
So yes you're right but one is much shittier than the other.
The games made in house are functionally identical to buying a studio that already existed. It's a game that can't be played anywhere else for arbitrary business reasons. I'd consider Sony's shittier, because I have to wait two years for a PC port, and Nintendo's shittier still because those games will never legally leave their platform.