Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by _zagj 885 days ago
Meanwhile MSFT, a monopolist megacap, was allowed to buy Activision-Blizzard?
4 comments
taspeotis 885 days ago
Yup, a firm monopoly on videogames if you ignore consoles [1], and PC (Steam, Epic) and mobile.

[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ps5-has-outsold-xbox-series-x-a...

link
nerdix 885 days ago
Last I checked JetBlue isn't a monopoly either (quite the opposite, in fact).

That suggests that there are other reasons to block a merger other than preventing a monopoly from from growing.

link
avbanks 885 days ago
That was the joke.
link
Crosseye_Jack 885 days ago
And titles from indie devs / smaller studios (which I find myself going back to play much more these days, than titles from the "big boys").
link
adabyron 885 days ago
The FTC of US & CMA of UK made Microsoft spend a ton of money to get that acquisition & tried very hard to block it. A US judge in California ruled the FTC had a bad case.

Microsoft & Activision merging only moved them to the 3rd largest studio. Also it has plenty of pro competition factors allowing them to compete against Sony & Nintendo. They also made deals with many other distributors about expanding their game reach via cloud services. Lastly it allowed them to acquire King. Microsoft would like to break into mobile gaming more & there is a very monopolistic walled garden ala Google & Apple.

Go after Microsoft for their monopolist tactics but this wasn't one.

link
stetrain 885 days ago
They tried:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...

link
kyrra 885 days ago
The general principle of the current administration is that big is bad.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/unfortunately-big-is-bad-is-bac...

We have seen this with of the merger challenges that have happened since Biden took office. Trump also tried to block a few, mainly out of his own ego from what I could see. (AT&T-Time Warner Deal specifically).

link