I am on the side that this merger should never have happened in the first place.
I am totally fine with the fact that it got finalized.
But if a 69bn merger did not got already forbidden, which one does then? Only When Microsoft, Disney and Comcast would merge?
I missed that a jury would decide – a jury consisting of a random selection of people from the industry, press and players, in the best case.
ABK had never been disallowed to bring their franchises to all the platforms they wanted even before the merger. So I never understood their argument in court in the first place.
And what did everyone get?
A 10 year deal for CoD and a “case by case” decision with other franchises.
How is that possibly better than it was before for customers? If the courts decision was about the customers.
I don’t hate Microsoft.
But I despise their ‘low effort always been pushing competition around and buying things out’ attitude whenever they can’t make an impact on the market on their own.
They now own Zenimax, ABK and have been pushing GP enormously in financial terms. Their MAU grew and yet they still increased subscription prices. AND let off employees in the thousands.
And yet they still couldn’t overtake Playstation in terms of revenue numbers. Even BO6 won’t be able to catch up to that 10bn figure they are still behind Playstation in annual revenue.
So what does that mean?
That it will only get worse. Microsoft isn’t done yet with aquisitions. From now on in the next 5 years, they will go and try again – wether it’s Ubisoft, EA or maybe even T2.