> how does this deal make any financial sense to Microsoft if the plan wasn't eventually to implement anti-competitive practices much later down the line I'm a

> how does this deal make any financial sense to Microsoft if the plan wasn't eventually to implement anti-competitive practices much later down the line I'm also not a fan of this deal, but I think this is a good question worth an answer. I think you'd need to suggest exactly what practices they may want to implement. For example it's not hard to see why they would continue to want to put COD on PlayStation systems: that brings in a ton of money. You can imagine a world where yanking it helps Xbox, but I don't think that's an inevitable result; would they really want to give up $X Billion in revenue from PlayStation if that only brings in $Y Million in new Xbox sales? Obviously it all depends on the numbers, but it's an example of why they can still benefit from this transaction without implementing anti-competitive practices.