They should never have been allowed to make those acquisitions. Especially after they misled the FTC about Activision/Blizzard remaining independent and easily spun off again, and then immediately fired 1900 people afterwards forcing them to integrate more tightly into Microsoft gaming.
> The FTC isn't there to stop corporations from making mistakes.
That's not the point parent is trying to make either, but FTC was supposed to prevent detrimental anti-competitive and monopolistic behaviors, which that very much was.
I don't think you can view the horrific performance of MSFT's gaming division as an example of successful anticompetitive behavior. It is not in any way sustainable, as demonstrated by their slash and burn actions now.
And you're arguing that FTC should only act against potentially successful anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior? Who cares how high the chance of "success" (from Microsoft's POV), shitty behaviour is shitty behaviour, regardless or not if it's successful.
Of course not, but most folks poking at Microsoft are just borrowing their opinion from other people and regurgitating it for karma. I'm happy to crap on MS for bad decisions, but the constant "herp derp EEE" gets tired fast.
Yes, in this case it's a slightly different (and much more common) strategy - EEE was a bit of a Microsoft trademark but we see what's happening here much more widely, especially by massive companies as well as with PE. I'd say it'd be better described as AEE - Acquire, Enshittify, Extinguish...
I don’t think that applies here. They don’t have a monopoly on gaming, there are major competitors in the space, from Sony and Nintendo, as well as Steam/Indie devs. Buying some studios might be anticompetitive in some minor ways, for instance if you’re a huge elder scrolls or fallout fan, but there’s just too many games out there for that to possibly be a viable strategy at a macroscopic level.
This looks more like simple corporate incompetence. They never should have made those very expensive acquisitions.