Diablo, Overwatch and most other Activision franchises are on Switch, and with a new, more powerful Switch successor on the way, it’s very likely that support will increase.
But putting Nintendo aside, Google, Amazon and NVIDiA have cloud streaming services. And yet none of them have filed any complaints about an ABK purchase blocking competition in the cloud streaming space.
Again, this is whataboutism: why do these other companies need to file complaints in order to bring validity to Sony's claims? This is very "everyone jumps off the bridge" mentality here.
Google, Amazon, and Nvidia are not console platform holders. They do not have a vested relationship with ABK that is anywhere near as financially lucrative for them as ABK's is with Sony. Bringing Nintendo into this also doesn't work; those games you mention collectively pull nowhere near the revenue that COD does, and COD happens to be one of THE big ABK IPs (alongside Candy Crush) that are not on Nintendo platforms.
Because it is an important view for regulators to see that the deal only makes sense in a scenario where Microsoft extinguishes all competitors by methods beyond the "fair market competition" that regulators are charged with defending.
If Microsoft claim they are buying it to be competitive inside the established games industry then the numbers need to corroborate that, no? Otherwise they are at risk of being accused of misleading regulators. But as the numbers don't support that "competition" scenario Microsoft's MO is exposed IMO.
I don't think Godot also realizes that they are inadvertently hurting the argument that MS isn't leveraging division revenues outside of gaming to sustain the GamePass strategy. Which ironically, is one of the potential concerns when it comes to claims of anti-competitive practices. We already know that the Xbox division could have never made the ABK deal on its own accord; that took all of Microsoft's other division to come through and cover the costs of the buy and whatever else comes with it.
Which in itself isn't the big concern. However, if Satya Nadella is now out here saying they're making these acquisitions to "compete" with Sony...he has just kneecapped their own future acquisition potential! With both Zenimax and ABK revenue streams added to Xbox's, that puts them within spitting distance of PlayStation's usual annual revenue. That is now them being "competitive" with Sony in revenue. Even if Sony were to acquire Square-Enix, Capcom, Sega or another publisher of that type of size, it wouldn't be enough in terms of increasing PlayStation's revenue to where MS would have a good reason to buy another publisher.
I mean think about it. If MS already have Zenimax, already have ABK...why would they also need EA, or Take Two, or Embracer Group, to "compete" with Sony? At that point it is no longer about "competition", it's effectively them trying to starve Sony out of the console market as a platform holder. It would be a modern implementation of that "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" policy that has been with MS since the 1980s. That's
IF Microsoft go for other big publishers because, by Satay's own words, apparently these acquisitions have been about competition with Sony.
It's kind of hilarious that Satya has put a cap on MS's own further acquisition attempts via a public statement that can be used in the court of law, but ultimately if their major gaming acquisitions, at least for the next few years, stops at ABK, I think that's the right call. Expanding just for the sake of expanding, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. MS need to make sure their current acquisitions are able to prove their worth and put out some strong results, consistently, and at least some of them reaching new heights in what they're able to do (especially the ones that need it the most).
IMHO, they are set studio-wise for the next five years, at the very least. They have no further reason to buy further publishers or even developers. The only potential exception would be Asobo, but that depends on if Asobo are interested in wanting to sell. Otherwise, almost any other developer that MS could try wanting to buy, and certainly any other publisher, could easily be called for what it is: an act of aggression towards Sony (and other platform holders i.e Nintendo), with provable anti-competitive leanings. Which I'm sure is something MS would want to avoid getting tangled up with legally; after all if/when the ABK deal is approved that is going to open a lot of easy opportunities for Apple, Google, Amazon etc. to try buying virtually any other publisher and having almost no pushback because, hey, they can just point to MS buying ABK and ask regulators why they would approve that but not, say, Apple buying EA or Ubisoft.
And no, this wouldn't be possible without the acqusition. MS is not willing to burn that much money.
