I dislike how much many markets, including gaming, have been consolidating just as much as the next guy... but this justification from the FTC reads like nonsen

I dislike how much many markets, including gaming, have been consolidating just as much as the next guy... but this justification from the FTC reads like nonsense to me. I think what's really happening is the FTC (as they have shown for the last few years) wants to make an example out of a big tech company and they've decided to be overtly hostile to any large tech acquisition out of the gate. > With control over Activision’s blockbuster franchises, Microsoft would have both the means and motive to harm competition by manipulating Activision’s pricing, degrading Activision’s game quality or player experience on rival consoles and gaming services, changing the terms and timing of access to Activision’s content, or withholding content from competitors entirely, resulting in harm to consumers. How does any of this harm competition? These represent competitive actions. MS would be forcing Sony to invest in new features/content for their platform in order to make up for lost appeal. If a consumer is "harmed" by a game not being available on another platform, then first-party exclusives should be considered harmful unilaterally. I should hope that this same reasoning applies to Sony's recent acquisition of Bungie. And it sure is suspicious how Nintendo isn't brought up here. Nintendo's ongoing success without CoD was a key argument for Brazil's approval of the deal. How can Sony argue that CoD is essential to them when MS has offered them a 10 year grace period to figure out something that Nintendo clearly had figured out from the start? I at least kind of understood the arguments Sony made about cloud gaming being a nascent market which MS could dominate by coupling their Azure platform with Game Pass and a few big name titles like CoD... but they don't really say anything about that in this release. I guess we'll see if this pans out for the FTC should they choose to sue, but I'd bet heavily against them if this release is a representation of the arguments they intend to make in court.