Court denies FTC last-ditch attempt to stop Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard
theverge.com
theverge.com
Lots of earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36682139
So not technically a dupe.
The situation with Xbox is even worse. Sony is way ahead of them, and has been for 2 generations now.
Microsoft has never held a weaker position in the consumer market.
They are definitely the GM of video games, crippling and gobbling up the competition and making some horrible products. They have all the incentive to keep all of these games on DirectX now. They will corner their own market and try to get people on Xbox.
I've never heard anything good about the PS5 recently. There's almost no games for it that don't already run better on PC. My PS5 is a $600 Bloodborne machine. The AAA games are garbage cinematic experiences with gaming as an afterthought. I'm playing old PS1 games because these new games are so shallow.
If there's some global numbers that people think this is a great thing, I've yet to see them.
There is speculation that Microsoft may diverse its Cloud Gaming service in the UK. Notably Australia and New Zealand have not approved the acquisition either, but will likely provide conditional approval based on the UK arrangement.
I expect it will all be over by Tuesday.