It's a different administration. I don't know if that will make a difference, but it's safe to say breaking up corporate monopolies was not high on the Trump agenda, unless they were owned by people he disliked.

Fifteen (?) years later, I’m still glad I went purple in the high-def wars. And I’m pretty sure no one I know IRL would understand that statement.

I genuinely think this merger is a bigger antitrust concern than Fox-Disney would be. What percentage of PC game sales would a merger of Blizzard/Activision/Bethesda/Microsoft represent? Certainly more than the percentage of ticket sales that the merger of Disney with Fox represented.

But they are still, even with this acquisition, smaller than Tencent and Sony in the overall space, right? Even just PC alone I don't think they are that big when you look at everything available on Steam and others.

Sony yes, Tencent it doesn't seem like it.

TOP 10 BIGGEST VIDEO GAME COMPANIES IN THE WORLD 2021:
1. SONY Gaming Revenue: $25.0 billion
2. TENCENT Gaming Revenue: $13.9 billion
3. NINTENDO Gaming Revenue: $12.1 billion
4. MICROSOFT Gaming Revenue: $11.6 billion
5. ACTIVISION BLIZZARD Gaming Revenue: $8.1 billion
6. ELECTRONIC ARTS Gaming Revenue: $5.5 billion
7. EPIC GAMES Gaming Revenue: $4.8 billion
8. TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE Gaming Revenue: $3.1 billion
9. SEGA SAMMY Gaming Revenue: $2.3 billion
10. BANDAI NAMCO Gaming Revenue: $2.2 billion
* Capcom - $858m
* Konami - $107m

Valve, EA, Capcom, Take Two, Rockstar, WB, Ubisoft, CDPR, Sony, Tencent, Riot, a lot of indie games that do really well, plus others that I'm probably not thinking of.

It would obviously be a large company, but large doesn't necessarily mean a monopoly.

Luckily Microsoft has been buying people who make games I could give a fuck about. I'm just hoping they don't buy someone like Fromsoft/Bandai Namco or someone like that.

That's a personal silver lining for me too. I can't name a single game from Bethesda, Activision or Blizzard that I play(outside of the recent Deathloop). No loss there (even though I own all consoles), but competition is better for consumers.

Yeah, that's BS too. Letting Disney swallow up Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel & Fox is just fucked up.

Guess we should be rooting for Sony to swallow up EA and Epic to keep things competitive?

On the Bethesda side in recent years for me: Deathloop, Doom, Wolfenstein, and...well, Rage 2, but we don't talk about Rage 2.

Blizzard? The closest thing semi-recently is Overwatch, but I'm fine never playing that again. My wife was obsessed for months, but she hasn't played in years and has zero interest in Overwatch 2. I never got into Diablo and haven't played a Warcraft game since Warcraft 2 more than a quarter-century ago.

For Activision, it depends on what I use as a cutoff point. I picked up a few licensed titles for a short while there: Transformers Devastation, The Peanuts Movie, and Deadpool, mostly around 2015 and 2016. Over the past few years, it's limited to the Spyro Reignited trilogy, the Tony Hawk remake (which I admittedly dropped very quickly; all that muscle memory from the OG Xbox is long gone, and I'm too lazy to get it back), and a huge stack of Call of Duty games. I'm the weirdo who plays through the campaigns but never touches multiplayer.

I don't know how much of the talent that made these games great is still around, but I'd love to see more Spyro (or other character action/platformer-types) from Toys for Bob, and if there's...errr, anyone from the Transformers day still at High Moon who wants to give that franchise another go, I'm all for it. It seems as if Activision owns the IP for Metal Arms: A Glitch in the System, and I'd love, love, love to have access to that, even if it's just via BC or something. (I mean, I know I could just plug in my ancient Xbox, but...!)

I still don't own one of the new x-boxes and probably won't get one until Bethesda makes a new Fallout game. Outside of Fallout and the last COD to utilized semi-futuristic gameplay (2-3 COD's ago), I have not heard of or played any of the games from the other developers.

tsk. too bad they still have no games...

^ Sony makes games. MS buys companies that make games. I mean yeah they'll have some good exclusives eventually, but if it's a result of withholding games from coming out on other systems rather than making great original content, is that really so great for the industry?
(Note : There is some hyperbole in that statement. MS made Halo Infinite, FH5 and Flight Simulator last year and they're all excellent original games for the XSX)

But as long as there are new AAA games that I won't have to buy as long as I continue to be a Game Pass member, I guess I can live with it.

Rockstar Games next?

To be fair, it's not like Sony is shy about buying up studios, too. The difference is they've bought relatively smaller ones, one at a time, instead of going full 'warchest' and buying up a big publisher like MS announced today. But Sony's been playing this acquisition game a lot longer, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were in the bidding for Activision Blizzard, too. And they probably have some kind of roadmap for more companies they're interested in procuring, too. They just might have to accelerate that a bit now.

I don't disagree with your point, though. But I do find it a bit odd when people talk about withholding games from coming out on other systems, as if that isn't one of the main purposes for making acquisitions in the first place. I'm just glad that I'm fortunate enough to be in a multi-console household where two consoles can be for exclusives and one is for exclusives and everything else.

Sony, Tencent, MS, Nintendo, and whoever else are at the top of this industry... they're all going to be just fine. Groups of employees who are (rightfully) upset will take their cash when this sale is done, and go build indie studios, which is IMO where most of the good shit is coming from these days anyway. While I think this move is partially about "hurting Sony," I think it's also very much more about not letting Apple/Amazon/Google and fucking Facebook (sorry, "Meta") to gain too big inroads into the industry. If MS is going full-tilt on Game Pass and, especially, XCloud, those companies could realistically be far bigger threats than Sony would ever be.

Don't forget that Sony also pays some companies for exclusive rights for games. So all this whining about MS is hypocritical as Sony has done the same thing.

MS is feeding Game Pass - which people love. Seriously, it's the biggest bargain in gaming today. MS could increase the price and it would still be a bargain. It beats having to buy games at $60+ each.

68.7 Billion isn't chump change - it's an insane amount. However, to MS - it's almost sofa-cushion money. They're paying in a all-cash deal too.
Sony can't compete in the acquisition game - their pockets aren't nearly as deep. In fact, MS could afford to buy Sony if they wanted to (they don't want to) and still have a fuck-ton of money left.

The only purple I know is the Kinect games... are you talking about HD-DVD which was red/maroon?

It's always Red vs. Blue lol

Now who is going to buy EA and Take-Two and fix them?

If there's one thing the government is good at, it's understanding the video game industry in every single way...

That Gamepass subscription price is going to go way up when this acquisition goes through. Didn't they already try to raise prices and then had to walk it back? Oh wait, that was just Live...

The internal turmoil with Kotick and leadership really did some damage to their stock and made them a prime target for a buyout, which makes me wonder how hard it is to find a whistleblower and do something to a company for this purpose (not that I suspect anything nefarious here), especially with how some of these game companies are run.

Also, MS has shown that they can play nice with multiplatform games, the prime example being Minecraft, so I guess we'll see what happens. Having the Activision/Blizzard games be "free" on Gamepass may be all that they want for the bigger franchises that are already multiplatform.

Take Two also just bought Zynga a week or so ago too, and that's just earth shattering news there.

We can't let them continue to use the "didn't know any better" excuse. They should have experts they consult with for these merger cases.

Minecraft already existed on other platforms when MS bought them. And Sony already had a window of exclusively deal for Deathloop when MS acquired Bethesda. There is zero indication that going forward these studio's games will ever be on a Sony or Nintendo console.

They most likely won't keep releasing them on PS (why should they), but they will of course continue to release them on PC.

Oh absolutely. They clearly want to be the Titans of the PC gaming business. I'm fairly certain they will stop bringing new PC games from Activision and Bethesda to the Steam store though.