I mean, I guess it depends on where you wiki, I
went with this defintion from European Commission: "Foreclosure is defined as denying actual or potential competitors profitable access to a market".
And
that is the definition you need to use when considering the EU legislation. You can not just chose (or wiki) your own preferred terms of what legislation means. That is why terms are defined. Again, I only contested your earlier claim - which is very different.
Sony is making the argument that ownership of CoD would cause them to foreclose.
What Sony are claiming is that Microsoft putting Call of Duty into Game Pass would impact a profitable market. But that's just market forces at play as far as I'm concerned. I presume there are unreleased documents that unpin Sony's concerns that are probably centred on the profitability of Game Pass and perhaps a belief that this is an attempt by Microsoft to 'compete' with uncompetitive practices. I.e. grabbing a chunk of a popular game whilst making next to no profit. There are a considerable number of 'logic gaps' in the arguments included in the documents that the UK CMA have released - even in the redacted versions. And these may be among the issues being looked at by the regulators.
I think here when I was writing this: that in Sony's worst possible setup for PS3, and MS best possible console setup with Xbox combined with the ownership of COD exclusive benefits and market rights (when COD was HOT, and not just the remakes we have today) was unable to cause any market foreclosure. In fact, numerically, Sony still beat them at the end, and MS had a very successful kinect launch as well!
For me, what the 360/PS3 era shows is that when Sony put out an unappealing console, very few people bought it - IIRC Sony were barely selling a few thousand units a week at launch and the things were sitting on shelves. Early games were technically rough and exclusives limited in number and quality. This is the market speaking. When Microsoft put out a desirable console, lots of people bought it. 360 has technically competition, affordable and games like Gears, Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Halo 3 were Again, this was the market speaking.
Over the course of the 360/PS3 generation, things changed. PS3 plumetted in price and Sony's first party line up of games become stronger over time - certainly in terms of critical accolades and things like GOTY nominations. In contrast, it felt like Microsoft suffered a reputation hit with RRoD which it denied was an issue for a long, long time. While you say Microsoft had a successful Kinect launch, I don't think Kinect (despite selling well) set the world of gaming on fire.
Then I don't believe it makes any sense to say that ownership of COD will cause market foreclosure, and it verifies in my mind that CoD is just not that important as people think it is, and today's F2P market, it's less important than ever. If CoD was so dominant, it wouldn't have needed to have gone F2P with Warzone for instance. Steam has gone some time without COD on its store. No effect.
You are again using the term "foreclosure" differently to the legislation and processes. That's not to take away that are Sony are being ridiculous in their position of some weird entitlement to eternal massive profits off this particular franchise.
Windows, Google Search, Ad Words, IOS, etc are all monopolies. Let's be real, there's no competitor in those particular areas. Bing is the closest competitor to Google search and is less than 1% of all total search or something of that sort.
iOS currently has around 28% of the world mobile market, and
Android has around 71%. I know iPhones are more popular in North America, but the last I saw iPhones accounted for just over - marginally - half of smartphones sold, which is not by any stretch meeting any legislative definition of market domination.
I wouldn't call those dominating. The silver lining is that today Sony and Xbox still compete. But as of late, I just don't see much innovation coming from Sony.
You'll have to help by giving me examples of what innovation you want. In terms of the broad use of consoles, Sony tried changing the console market with PS3, which it pitched as a multimedia device on which you play games, watch movies (DVDs, Blue-ray) and which was also your photo library - oh and it could run linux so you could use linux desktop apps. The market really wasn't that interested. When Sony has put our a competent, affordable console with good games, it's sold well. There is a risk with innovation, like PS3, like Kinect, Xbox One's TV focus - things that really don't resonate with gamers that much and nor do they penetrate the non-gaming consumer buyers, except in rare cases like PS2 selling as a cheap DVD player and - to a lesser extent - PS3 selling as a cheap Blu-ray player.
What innovations are you looking for? Technological? Game ideas?
I think if MS is done. There won't be another competitor, things may just stay as Nintendo, PS, and PC. There's just no way to penetrate that market, the upfront costs to break into the console industry is staggering and the net return doesn't make financial sense if you're just playing for the generation. With console hardware moving at an even slower pace, I cant' see anyone wanting to step up.
It's ironic that you question the need the regulation, then trot out one the reason that the regulation exists. Your post - pretty much all of your posts - focus on Sony and Microsoft. It feels like you are utterly blind to everything the regulators are saying except where Microsoft's narrative ties to Sony. Yet, you raise concerns about the viability of a new entrant getting into the market, which is utterly baffling because that is the biggest issue that the regulators are looking at. Having these massive companies dominating a market makes it really difficult for new players to come in. When developers and publishers are independent, they may chose to adopt publish on any platform but by reducing the number of independent publishers, you make it that much harder for a new player to be viable.
I think the ultimate fool making move would be for them to succeed in blocking the acquisition, but have Activision board members and management be so burned by the process that they sign an exclusive deal with Microsoft, even if it's only marketing/DLC like they have with Sony now for COD, but full portfolio. Or, Activision just sells off a few studios and IP (like Blizzard, all of the Sierra IP, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Crash and Spyro) and all that becomes exclusive, While Activision just makes COD.
Activison and Microsoft could have done this at any point. Why haven't they? As they say, it takes two to tango. Why haven't Microsoft partnered more with Activision over Call of Duty? Microsoft have much deeper pockets than Sony.
And why do you want that?
