It is because in countries like the US for insistance, there is a more attention placed on the dominance of âbig techâ that I feel is not the case in Brazil.
I get the impression that Sonyâs relationship with Activision is going to be permanently damaged no matter the outcome.
Being lame duck wonât stop them.
I can see see them writing a lawsuit that ABK acquisition is too much for the ânascent Game Pass marketâ (letâs say they will define it the same way) like they did with Meta/Within and that âMicrosoft should invest in opening studios and hiring people because they have resources for thatâ.
The irony is that it does not benefit connsumer at this point, but regulators (FTC) went away from that some time ago.
Sonyâs arguments - while awkward - are appealing to the regulators from CMA to FTC. There we have ânascent marketsâ, âbig techâ and so oon.
By that logic FTC can sue any company. âRather than buying, invest in creation of this or thatâ
Even if they argue that regarding those markets, gamepass does not even have 50% market share. There are simply too many competitors that already have substantial subscriber bases.
An argument regarding nascent markets where they dont have a majority market share either would not be legal under current US law either and they would probably lose in court on day 1.
Well, Sony was arguing that Game Pass was having like 60-70% of market share no? Every relatively new market is a monopoly essentially as nobody else is doing that.
That was specific to Brazil from what I recall and that was mostly because other offerings were likely not supported there.
The big issue with how they do things for me, is that in order for the build it yourself arguments to make sense it would have to involve 2 companies competing in the same space. Where the #1 company(Sony) sees competition from the company in 2nd(Nintendo) or 3rd(Microsoft) because of things theyâre doing differently, and it tries to buy the any of the others to lessen the competion(like Sony buying Nintendo, instead of bringing back vita) and offer those features.
In MSFT/ABK case, I think this doesnât exist, as Microsoft is the company offering the better features and buying to compete with the #1 company. While new companies are entering the space and buying to be competitive with everyone and new studios keep getting funded.
Sony claimed that in the Brazilian market. I wont claim to specifically know the Brazilian market, but it may well be considerably different than the US market. Otherwise Sony just straight up lies, because we know the market contains at minimum the below competitors and those competitors have subscriber numbers that do not correspond to even a 30% market share for gamepass.
In the US, I know all of these multi-game subscription services are available:
GeForce Now (14 million subscribers)
EA Access (12 million subscribers)
Nintendo Online (36 million subscribers)
PS Plus (45 million subscribers)
Gamepass (29 million subscribers)
Luna Plus (? subscribers)
Ubisoft Plus (? subscribers)
Humble Choice (? subscribers)
There are also services that are most definitely multi-game subscription services but Iâve seen them not included because of reasons before like Netflix, Google Play Pass, Apple Arcade.
With whole Within/Meta case we had a company that had Beat Saber (Halo) and produced VR headset (Xbox) and Within (ABKCOD). And FTC still came out with the idea to sue claiming that Meta should have invested in making fitness app. We can apply the same with ABK/Microsoft.
It is more a question if FTC is willing to go against Microsoft and (what an irony) unions 
I will check it again.
Either way, the answer is either, Sony lied or it only applied to the Brazilian multi-game subscription service market. We know from Sonyâs filings that they have fabricated information dozens of times, so I would not be surprised to see them lieing.
Meta is the dominant market force in VR platforms though, they basically are that market and only face real competition from Sony who is focused on a niche (gaming) in that market. Meta controls 70% of that platform market.
Additionally, Within does control 70% of their admittedly narrowly defined market.
If we look at Xbox, they do not control 70% of any platform market, they dont even control that for subscription services. Also, even with extremely narrow focus on fps online shooters (CODs most narrow definition), they dont control 70% of that market. Also, if the FTC is unable to include fps and has to just say online shooters, then COD sits at somewhere less than 20% of that market.
Annualized fps market. COD is like 100% of that market. Boom.
FTC:
Xbox folks:
Well played, now delete this before the FTC see it 
Essentially closing this deal is good for competition, consumers and even regulators.
Im going to need to take a day off when the deal closes just to laugh at all the videos/outrage
My current predictions are.
CMA and EC will go through with acceptable to no concessions. The reason I say this is that both the CMA and EC framed the markets are console, game sub, and cloud. None of those markets have horizontal concerns, only vertical. For vertical foreclosure concerns, they have to provide data that show COD is an necessary input to any of the markets(CMA showed that Giphy was 70% of the image sharing market). Thatâs an impossible task. Itâs much easier to prove that COD and AKB games are not (Nintendo, Steam, GEForce Now, % market share of publishing). Theyâll have to rely on predictive harm and predictive SLC. In those cases the CMA and EC most likely will do behavioral concessions. As MS noted in their response to the CMA, CMA blocked less than 1% of vertical mergers.
The FTC will be a block or an order to divest Activision / the COD IP. The FTC will define the market as something very narrow like they did in the Within case (VR fitness market). I think a good candidate would be annualized fps market. They can point to the fact that COD is unique amongst shooters and AAA games in general outside of sports games to be annualized. COD has 100% of the market. Theyâll say that MS will have HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL foreclosure ability if they get COD since they will own 100% of this market.
In addition, theyâll likely use Section 7 of the Clayton act to point to that MS is putting up barriers to entry in the nascent cloud gaming market, the same way that Meta did for VR. That MS should have use their vast resources to fill the need for AKB games, just like they said Meta should have made a Within competitor.
What does this mean?
I think once one of CMA and EC will approve, MS and AKB will renegotiate the terms of the merger agreement to drop the FTC approval, if the FTC complaint isnât outright dismissed with prejudice by the administrative judicial judge. FTC administrative judicial process will take longer than the current July 2023 deadline. The FTC will lose the case eventually, if not outright dismissed. There is no penalty to moving ahead with closing the deal, since deals are not approved in the US.
I see them closing to deal with no concessions everywhere.
You are really going to will no concessions into existence.