Man, this really really sucks. Microsoft consolidating the industry and trying to create an effective monopoly is horrendus for the entire industry. Im not even a console player, PC only, but even I can see that this is major bad news. The ppl in this thread who are saying "Oh so awesome, great gamepass value" are braindead and they will be the first hit by this. Just to give you a few ideas of the stunts Microsoft can pull once they have a majority of the industry by the balls (some of these might seem outragous now, but they are all perfectly within the realms of possibility for a company that doesnt have to worry about competition):
"We have decided to double/triple the price of gamepass. What you cant afford that? Tough shit."
"We have decided to pull all of our titles from retail and make them only available through gamepass. What, you cant afford a monthly subscription? What are you gonna do, miss out on all your favorite games? LOL."
"The Xbox console will from now on be 75% more expensive. What are you going to do, buy a God-of-War-station? LOL."
"We have decided to pull all of our games from steam and put them only on our shitty windows store app. What are you going to do, miss out on the latest Elder Scrolls/COD/DOOM/Blizzard thing? LOL."
"Company heads have decided that we want to push our new Windows 11/12/X OS, so from now on all new games will arbitrarily only run on the latest undercooked and broken OS we have released. What are you going to do, miss out on all the latest and greatest games? LOL." <- Pretty sure this will happen, sincerely hope Im wrong
You all have to realize one thing: Microsoft does NOT care about the gaming industry. For them gaming is just another leveraging card in their crusade to monopolise a large portion of the entire tech sector.
I really really hope that this aquisition gets blocked. If Microsoft and Activision Blizzard were based in my country, this aquisition would definitely get blocked by regulators.
