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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Technology
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This is not true. Horizontal mergers are always bad for the consumer. Vertical mergers, like this one, can either be good or bad or neither. In many other cases they have been a net benefit to consumers and actually increased competition
No one is expecting Microsoft to act altruistically. We are expecting them to rake in more cash, especially from King, and invest that cash in games, gamepass, and actual competition to Sony and Nintendo. We are expecting them to make smart business decisions and, SHOCKER, there are smart business decisions available to them that are also beneficial to consumers
No company is your friend. But a smart company finds ways to make money off you while still leaving you happy and content after
Exactly. If this weren't the case, companies wouldn't exist in the first place.
That said, MS has historically been pretty anti-competitive and monopolistic so I don't see any reason to expect that to change. But I think that even at their worst, this isn't going to be as bad as people are making it out to be. Playstation won't go away because of this. Playstation is already worse than Xbox in almost every way, they're just coasting right now. People will point to this merger as a turning point for PS but I think that ignores where PS is already at.
Activision Blizzard is such an awful company that I stopped playing their games, for ethical reasons. I'm no fan of Microsoft or consolidation, but at least they don't have a habit of supporting human rights abuses. This acqisition has me considering playing (ex-)Blizzard games again.
Do you have any examples?
How is a games publisher buying another games publisher not horizontal integration?
Microsoft is not primarily a game publisher. They develop the thing the games run on, while they also own other studios that publish and develop games.
That's vertical integration for a company that also happens to own other vertically integrated assets. Not horizontal just because other game publishers exist under Microsoft.
Yes exactly. It's obvious when you compare the pre-merger relationship between Microsoft and ABK to, say, the relationship between Microsoft and Sony. The latter is very competitive, whereas the former is more symbiotic