184
Microsoft’s $69bn deal to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard cleared by UK
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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I'm torn between wanting Activision to get new management and not wanting Microsoft to aquire two major companies and dominate the market
It's really bad. This is all about Game Pass. MS wants to acquire enough of the industry big IPs to force people onto Game Pass. All of tech right now is trying really hard to get people locked into subscriptions because it's effectively free, easy money. You don't have to convince consumers to constantly buy new stuff. You just need to dissuade them from canceling a subscription, which is much easier.
Then they just gobble up more of the market share until they've hit their theoretical maximum. Then they can raise prices because they've captured the market and driven competitors away. They've already made it so you pretty much need Game Pass if you own an Xbox. Long-term they could stop selling PC games on Steam, but they probably won't because the PC market is so much smaller than console and they can point to that as a "win" for consumer choice.
Sony has nothing successful enough compared to Game Pass and as they fall further behind they'll likely abandon it entirely.
Then enshitification sets in and all the games suck.
We're well past that point.