It looks like the Microsoft-Activision merger is happening

[A Black Falcon]

The talking points against the merger often are just Sony fan talking points, though.  You do know that, right?  Even the FTC basically came across as repeating Sony talking points over and over, because they didn't have much of a case otherwise.

Also, given how strongly anticompetitive Sony also is with their constant moneyhatting of third parties, they had less than no leg to stand on to push back against this merger with.  "What MS is doing is awful! ... but what we're doing, which is basically the same but for a lower dollar total because we aren't as rich as Microsoft, is totally fine..." and the FTC said "yeah, we agree"? What?


Consolidation certainly can lead to bad outcomes, as stagnation takes hold and too few huge companies control a market in a way that stifles competition and innovation and hurts consumers, but this merger doesn't get gaming to that point.  Could gaming get there with the consolidation that is ongoing, yes in the AAA space, but this does not get there.  I don't think that you can stop a merger because future mergers might result in something which does not exist now and won't after this merger...

Still, yes, it is unfortunate that Microsoft is buying up so many top developers.  However, the reason isn't just about Microsoft wanting to beat Sony (and Microsoft), it's also about how ludicrously expensive game development is now. Seriously, I think the best takeaway from this whole thing is that game development cost ludicrous amounts of money and time now and that is unlikely to change.  Blocking mergers won't fix how insanely expensive and time consuming AAA game development is now, or how even one failed project can doom a studio.  AAA(A) games take many years to complete and huge sums of money to develop.  You need to be a large company to afford that.  It's not the '90s anymore when a midsized company can be a major player in the big budget for the time game space.  I don't see a solution to this, unfortunately, that doesn't result in consolidation... it's not a great trend but it's where the constant progress of improving tech has brought us thanks to how long it takes to make a major title now.

But, again, looking at this merger in a vacuum, I'm kind of sad for the industry that even large publishers can't make it anymore and are merging into first parties, but look at Activision now, their entire massive third of ABK is entirely focused on Call of Duty.  I do not like Call of Duty, at all.  Maybe Microsoft will have the resources to make things OTHER than CoD out of the many good IPs in Activision's back catalog, that would be great!  There's so much more than just CoD they could do...  there is both good and bad that could come from this.  The good is potentially significant too.