Despite the somewhat confusing title, this is an analysis of the merger trial, and how it could continue. Definitely worth the read, it pulls back the curtain on what happens when two giant corporations are trying to fuse.
“The idea is to create a moat that nobody else can attack.” - Microsoft exec Matt Booty
I wouldn’t call it irrelevant. In my opinion it’s almost a given that long term, this is a bad deal for consumers. If you like video games, you should be rooting for competition, not consolidation.
Microsoft has in the past and will in the future abuse monopoly powers, if one lets them.
I doubt this deal will be bad for the consumers long term or short term. The mobile market is so f’ing massive that this deal won’t change shit for them, as MS footprint in that part of the gaming space is tiny.
And for consoles, (even if they made CoD exclusive), it would probably just spice the competition up a bit. Making it more fierce. For PC, it’s pretty much completely irrelevant. Both MS and ActiBlizz already focus on PC.
Currently, Activision is a CoD factory, and that is all they give a shit about within the console and PC space. Mobile is too big(Remember that mobile is 50% of everything Activision Blizzard is). Blizzard is… not so much the giant from the past. They are releasing a game as often as MS is releasing an OS, and the quality of what they release is not exactly top-notch, Diablo 4 came out to pretty good reviews, while users said: eh… this isn’t what we wanted as time goes.
At the end of the day, I feel this is MS throwing away a massive part of their war chest on mobile garbage. (from a PC player perspective), but on the upside, I might get to see some Hexen or Soldier of Fortune in the future. And if I don’t, well, nothing has changed, as it’s just rotting between those ass cheeks I mentioned earlier.