The Federal Trade Commission’s request for an injunction stopping that acquisition heads toward opening arguments this week, the federal regulator cites one piece of what it calls “powerful evidence” that it can’t trust Microsoft’s assurances. In short, as the FTC puts it, “Microsoft’s actions following its 2021 acquisition of ZeniMax speak louder than Defendants’ words.”
I don’t understand how anybody could see this market consolidation as a positive! Yes, in the short term ABK games will be added to Game Pass, but once Game Pass is the only “game” in town, the price gouging monopolistic behavior will follow.
Maybe it’s just me - I see enough game studios being formed week by week, not even just making crummy pixel games, that I can never picture any publisher being “the only game in town” in any remotely significant way.
Just look at what Spotify has done to the music industry. There was a massive contraction in the music buying market and music streaming services now are fully dominant. And Spotify + Apple have used their oligopoly status to fuck over artists and even record labels, forcing them to accept a fraction of a penny per stream.
It’s not a one to one comparison, but I could see subscription-based game licensing crowding out buy to own games eventually if Microsoft keeps consolidating the market as it has been. And then, once consumers are used to never paying for games individually, Microsoft, Amazon, Sony, etc will be able to dictate whatever terms they want to game developers.
And worse is that the industry could react with further consolidation if this went through.
After Microsoft bought Bethesda, Sony reacted by buying a series of studios for itself. Yeah those studios had a historically close relationship with Sony already (besides Bungie, the most recent), but now they’re officially tied together.
I’m not sure if Sony has the FU Microsoft money to buy another top ten publisher, but imagine if they could and bought out Ubisoft/EA/Square Enix and now those games would never come on Xbox again?
It’s already hard enough for gamers to play anything/everything due to exclusivity and needing to buy multiple systems. If I didn’t have a PC, I would be extremely annoyed at being unable to play Starfield when I played Oblivion, Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, etc on PlayStation.
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