No, concessions would be based around cloud and or cod. For your mental health though, even if the deal deteriorates and a concessions can not be met (ie MS walks away) it is completely out of your control and worthless to worry about. I donât even think MS overall strategy going forward hinges on obtaining ABK, worse comes to worse they will simply shift their focus to other studios/pubs. It isnât a do or die situation here.
I feel like a lot of concerns about this deal are just the concern trolling at this point.
Yes and Jim Ryan is guilty of this, after his first dumb statement.
I do wonder what MS plan B would be if somehow it ended up not working out with ABK, their goal is pushing gamepass hard now regardless so itâs not like it would suddenly stop them acquiring others
Tbh, I think playstation fans should be hoping this deal goes through, if it didnât it opens things up for MS to acquire things they care about a lot more than CoD
Why on Earth would there be a concession like that? Is Sony going to put their first party game on Xbox then?
Again you are framing regulatory bodies as if theyre there to protect Sony. What makes Sony entitled to Starfield or any game for that matter?
Absolutely, that Starfield post was bad but not as mind numbingly stupid as that Resetera post that MS would have to spin off Azure and Mojang
This deal has brought out the worst in concern trolling
Yep
These regulatorâs arenât here to protect Sonyâs dominance, they are here to prevent companies from buying something that makes them so powerful nobody else can compete
Jimbo is not guilty for people buying into all that stuff. Sonyâs FUD is strong as Sony has been able to cultivate such level of entitlement that even people on Xbox feel that they somehow should appease Sony.
I wonder if eventually somebody will start saying that due to Windowsâ monopoly in PC gaming, Microsoft shoud spin off Windows 
Microsoft had XCloud before Stadia launched. Microsoft had their exclusives day one on Game Pass since Sea of Thieves in March 2018. Stadia launched in November 2019. Google didnât have any internal studios and no games at launch, they didnât invest and once they were outbid for Bethesda, they shutdown their internal studios and basically end their service from a first party perspective. Now, they shut down completely and itâs Microsoftâs fault? Really?
Google is worth just under $2T fucking dollars and did NOTHING with Stadia. Their roll out sucked, their format of buying games that were mostly old releases (reminded me of Wii U in this regard) at full price that can only be streamed sucked, they had no studios/exclusives and once they realized that holy shit, we have to spend tens of billions of dollars to do this shit, they took their balls and went home.
Also, itâs amazing how Microsoft is always the bad guy or canât do this or that because it affects other companies or some shit like that. Itâs simply ridiculous and I hope Microsoft stays aggressive and keeps going nuclear on all these other companies.
Either spend your billions and trillions to compete or get the fuck out!!!
Jim Ryan is not a rookie and he knew that making that statement public, will rattle the Sony hardcore fans and the media too and countless of articles will be written and heâs trying to change the public perception of this deal in an effort that he think it could help with regulators blocking the deal. imo!
The irony is that his statement did not rattle the media that much. In fact the media took neutral-negative stance on his statement. He did try to use the public sentiment, but it is not PS4 generation anymore thus it did not gain traction aside âShut up, Jimbo!â. There were some articles but even the public sentiment around them was that those article were cringy.
I must admit, bit similarly to what Nick and Jon said on the podcast, I would rather this failed sooner rather than later so they could focus elsewhere, in terms of publishers and studios.
How Microsoft the bad guy again?
First time I am appreciating your long post
I donât understand people who want this deal to fail. Donât people understand that if it were to be blocked it will lead to years long litigation?
I know what you mean, Iâm getting very tired of this stuff now and just want it over and done with or blocked so things can continue.
However if it was blocked MS would likely take them to court and waste even more time. I have hope that the FTC is pretty deep into their investigation and will have their final decision made before the end of November. (Yeah Iâm dreaming but let me dream 
)
Not saying I want it to fail, Iâm just thinking of all the studios/publishers that they could be acquiring over the next months in the time waiting for an outcome.
They would not go to acquire anything while the court case is happening.
This ABK deal destroys completely the whole foundation that Sony has built over the years. It is much more important than any other publisher. This deal breaks Sonyâs ability to secure good third party deals which is already bigger benefit for Xbox than anything else.
This is something I feel people arenât thinking about
People see ABK/CoD and because they have no interest in it, theyâd rather have a different publisher and I totally get that feeling
But if there was one publisher that can create change for Xbox itâs ABK and the stronger the brand the harder it is for Sony to make deals and the easier it is for Xbox to get games they may not have before