Ehhh, the AOL Time Warner merger was worse. Way worse. $165 billion for AOL. Here's a good example of how bad it was:
Activision isn't big enough to crater Microsoft.
Yup, the fear was Game Pass on every system powered by the cloud, eating up the competition.
Yes, gamers want higher prices because cheap subscriptions like Game Pass used to devalue games in an unhealthy way.
She wasn't. The FTC's argument was that MS would have too much power, would be able to dominate the competition and effectively have a monopoly. Not that MS would struggle and have to raise prices because they couldn't attract customers and would have to grow or stabilize revenue by increasing prices.
Good point. Linda was right (in the short term) on the consumer protection front, but wrong on the longer anti-competitiveness front, which was ultimately her job to find a strong arguement for.
There are so many receipts waiting in that thread but someone has to go and find them
I really don't see these moves as Microsoft flexing it's market power. I see it as a short squeeze on current subscribers as the service plateaus and tapers off over the next few years.
They are still taking 5 bucks from you!
This is not a celebration of anything, this is the service going near what it actually means to forego all the sales with an insufficient user base.
Exercising what power? You are allowed to do all that shit after a merger - you just can't do it because you unfairly reduced competition through the merger. MS are less competitive now than they were before the merger.And the FTC said as much after last year's price hike.
'In the filing, the agency notes "Microsoft's price increases and product degradation—combined with Microsoft's reduced investments in output and product quality via employee layoffs," and calls them "the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger."'
FTC says I told you judge, I warned you bro, as it unloads on Microsoft for Game Pass price hikes and 'a degraded product' that it says break promises made to seal the Activision merger
The FTC notes that Microsoft didn't mention these hikes when it was talking about bringing CoD to Game Pass subs on day one.www.pcgamer.com
Yeah. They are selling less consoles, and making more games multiplatform. Nothing about that says 'we are competing better against the competition than before'.
Humans run corporations. Humans run government. Humans are good bad, honest, corrupt, and everything in between. Humans in govt are not inherently more honest than humans in business.And what "facts" exactly do the corporations present in situations like this?
"Facts" like this? :
And these? :
Isn't that what we were talking about? Well that and cloud but that was always a stupid argument based off of a lack of understanding of the market.
That's the EX FFC-Chairman.
She was right. She didn't say they will dominate consoles. She said it was a foreclosure risk of content and it was, until it was looking like it was blocked in the EU and UK. MS made concessions to get that through. The FTC also mentioned higher prices and layoffs as a result of the merger. She was right about those. Gamepass may not have grown how MS expected but they still command some market power in subscriptions and cloud gaming which gives the the ability to do this in the first place. the FTC and CMA separated these markets. It's just a much smaller pie than xbox had hoped for and so they're in a phase of milking the userbase earlier than expected.
You would have to prove that they always intended to increase prices because of the acquisition. Which they would never be stupid enough to put in writing (ok maybe) but it also probably wasn't their intention and this price increase isn't purely about the impact of the merger.
