If Tencent would buy ABK wouldn't be an issue for the consumers because it would mean CoD and the other ABK IPs would remain multiplatform.
Tencent still has a bit of an image issue when it comes to applying certain censorship standards on games, standards that at least for a while were in lockstep with some rather backwards perspectives of the CCP. Whether that has now changed or not I wouldn't know. However I still remember stupid stuff like when a Rainbow Six update to remove ghosts for the Chinese version was applied to the global versions of the game, despite the differences in perception of ghostly apparitions among different cultures.
I don't need more of that in games, thank you.
I think it would have better to ask instead to studios not owned by MS, but I agree that the acquisition wouldn't have any major effect other than helping MS to reduce the gap they have under Sony, and that it would positive to give Sony, the clear market leader, some extra competition. I also think that the acquisition wouldn't affect 3rd parties publishers and developers at all.
This is such a terrible argument. You are basically condoning mass consolidation and also are foolishly under the belief that companies need artificially boosted external competition to innovate or stay honest. Did you ever think that maybe the current position Sony & Microsoft are in within the market is the result of competition itself, and that Sony have been rewarded for successfully answering the needs of most of the industry and customers?
Why do you think a $2 trillion company should be allowed to buy a $69 billion 3P games publisher just to provide more competition to significantly smaller rival? You're basically admitting that Microsoft can only throw money at problems (meaning this is eventually $69 billion wasted). You're also being a bit short-sighted in terms of how other 3P pubs and devs could be affected; we actually had some indie devs last year come out and say why they were concerned with the acquisition. MS essentially shoring up huge stables of 3P talent and internal developers & content providers lessens Microsoft's reliance on securing indie content for services like Game Pass. Even somewhat larger 3P devs and pubs who do not have special arrangements with Microsoft (such as the one MS and Sega have), could be negatively impacted.
Also you're undershooting the ABK acquisition in terms of the value it brings to Xbox's revenue. It won't just "reduce the gap"; it'll literally put them within a hair's distance of PlayStation's (so far) peak FY revenue. Buying their way within a hair's distance (and if ABK generate more than $8.8 billion in annual revenue, exceeding PlayStation revenue with it & Xbox revenue combined potentially), and you're okay with that? Does it create more competition? Maybe. But we both know it's not from organic growth (i.e increasing product desireability to end customers); it's from buying another company and rolling their revenue into Xbox's. And in that scenario, it's very likely that the combined offerings further increase combined revenue and now you're in a timeline where Xbox could be doing $30 billion in annual revenue, maybe even more.
Unless your answer for companies like Sony to "compete" in that scenario is to similarly buy publishers and absorb their revenue into PlayStation's to artificially boost revenue there, then I have to say this outlook is pretty flawed. Even if that is something you would be okay with having happen, it's flawed regardless because it IMO just further encourages the market to "compete" via consolidation.
If something, it would mean that the deals that MS or Sony had with ABK now will be made with other publishers, who will get benefited from it.
That is probably one reason why certain other 3P publishers have little issue with the deal; it creates more room for them to get sweetheart deals that previously would've gone just to ABK. And that does present a lot of potential offers for Sony in particular.
Though there is still a risk. It depends on how specifically the ABK deal is approved. If it's with kids gloves behavioral remedies, and Microsoft gets the message they can buy other publishers, they WILL buy other publishers. Other Big Tech companies will get the message as well, so the scenario you paint here that Sony could theoretically benefit from, may not be in play as much as you think. What good does it do Sony to make a sweetheart deal with EA for Battlefield if Microsoft can sweep in and buy EA a couple years from now?
That's where I think you are vastly underestimating the impacts of this current acquisition, or at least should show more consideration for how it is improved under certain conditions.
