The Activision/Microsoft Saga: another rant

 Microsoft has been attempting to buy Activision. It has encountered some issues on Britain and apparently the US might have some issues with the purchase. Of course the XBox fans are making some crazy conspiracy theories blaming Sony for this. Sony who "is too poor to afford buying Activision" is suddenly "rich enough to bribe various trade commissions accross the globe". How does that work? Newsflash, it doesn't. The reason they're investigating this is quite obvious: It's Microsoft... who has had an actual Monopoly on the PC OS market for decades. So, with Microsoft's track record, it's logical that an investigation has to take place. Then again, if they're willing to throw 60+ BILLION dollars at Activision; surely some people would see red flags even if Microsoft's past monopolies are ignored. Hell, if Nintendo or Sony were to throw 60+ Billion at ANY company, red flags would pop up as well.

While I'm not exactlya fan of Activision's current offerings, I can see why people are worried. Activision Microsoft Bought Rare and barely anything good came out of that. They bought Bethesda and now Elder Scrolls 6 will be xbox exclusive "because it's not a huge game", despite Elder Scrolls 5 selling a shitton of games on multiple consoles including the Nintendo Switch. It's not like Xbox's Phil Spencer has said that console exclusives are bad for gaming... oh wait, he did.

 Think about this:

While it hasn't become a Monopoly yet, these acquisitions have one goal: Starve the opposition from games. 

Elder Scrolls, Doom, Fallout, Wolfenstein are 4 of Bethesda's biggest IPs. Now XBox exclusive, when they were Multiplatform earlier.

To that they want to add the Activision brands.

Even though I don't care much about Activision, that would add a sizable bunch of brands XBox exclusivity... and they were mostly Multiplatform.

Sure there's still Rockstar, Ubisoft, EA, 2k games, but what's stopping Microsoft from going after them? Since Japan seems to be a no go zone for MS, it makes sense for them to try and dry up the Western well. It's not necessarily illegal, but it's scummy. Before anyone tries to bring Street Fighter V, or Final Fantasy VII Remake, remember this:

Capcom made SFV with help from Sony who invested economically for the development of the game. Why would Sony fund the making of a game that will appear on its biggest competitor? That would make no sense. 

Hell, Microsoft rejected an exclusivity contract with Marvel. They also did it with Shenmue 3 whose previous game was an XBox exclusive in the West. 

With FFVII Remake, I have no idea why it hasn't been made available on Xbox since the timed exclusive deal ended. Maybe Square Enix doesn't want to release it on Xbox? Maybe they've run into some issues? I don't know. It SHOULD come out on XBox if there's no exclusivity contract on it now.

But with Microsoft attempting to dry up the well of Western developers in a different manner than Nintendo did back in the 80s, we should all be worried. Gamepass is the new "lock out chip"... This should have more people worried, but they get blinded by the whole Gamepass being a "cheap way to get games accessible". Let's face it, gaming has been slowly becoming anti-consumer with (especially in-disc) DLCs, migrating games to Digital only, requiring constant online access to servers, among other things that ruin gaming. With Microsoft pushing the Hell out of Gamepass, WE lose more power than we already lost.  Same thing applies with PS Plus.

Gaming is headed for a really dark era...