This is what's frustrating me. Now, I get why the FTC have made this a console-centric argument: the PI's meant to stop immediate harm coming about if the deal were to be closed. It's much easier to do that with the console argument than the cloud & mobile ones, since MS actually has a big share in console when it comes to gaming.
But the FTC could be doing a much better job tying in MS's ability to leverage their non-gaming elements in the backend to bring harm to direct competitors in the short-term that is arguably anticompetitive. How MS can leverage ABK as a tool to attract more sweetheart 3P deals with divisions like Azure netting trickle-down benefits to Xbox/Game Pass further enabling sustainment of a pseudo-predatory pricing model (that Jim Ryan even alluded to in his testimony) in ways competitors like Sony cannot match.
We've even seen this with the Sega x Azure strategic partnership; the Xbox division helped orchestrate that deal, it's a clear example of Xbox's ability to directly benefit from the much larger non-gaming sectors of MS while simultaneously tanking massive losses of its own (in terms of money being left on the table not needing to generate self-sufficient net profits or financing gaming-focused business strategies largely with the gaming division's own profits & valuation through revenue). So I don't understand why things like this are not at the center of the FTC's arguments.
Instead, MS's lawyers are clearly leaning into pro-consumer/ESG-laden talking points and focusing on the more upfront aspect of what thing may or may not be affected, diverting as much away from the backend and the larger scope of Microsoft as a corporation as possible. Let's hope that when the FTC's lawyers do the questioning, they drive the focus in that direction. As so far, they have generally seemed able to do so, albeit mainly focused on exposing hypocrisies and half-truths between Xbox executives regarding letters of intent and establishing a pattern of behavior on that front.
I'm still waiting to see them really tie in Microsoft as a whole to these proceedings in terms of how they've basically made this a Microsoft vs SIE play, i.e leveraging many things in Microsoft outside of Xbox itself to help Xbox "compete" better with PlayStation/SIE, which is just a part of Sony as a whole, and is not leveraging the whole of Sony to actually compete in anywhere near the same way (partly because it's not possible, partly because they would rather not if it can be helped).
