I have to disagree entirely with the assessment of FFXIII’s battle system. Woof. That battle system was even more of a reason I stopped playing it than the endless, overbearing hallways.  I just could not have any kind of fun in that game, and I tried for over 10 hours.  XIII-2 made it a lot less painful and I…

Tell me FFX is your favorite Final Fantasy without telling me FFX is your favorite Final Fantasy.

Just gonna say at the top I don’t think this acquisition is good for the industry long-term and I think it should probably continue to be blocked.

That said, Sony’s continued temper tantrum increasingly gives away the game, which is effectively “we are already pretty anti-consumer, but if you do this, we’ll get even…

Translation: “We see an opportunity to make more money and we’re going for it.”

I have to admit, while acknowledging that tastes are subjective, seeing FF12 listed there really took me by surprise. I actively have to hold back on making a snarky comment about that as from a story perspective it was a pretty huge mess and had one of more complicated development histories of the games.

I don’t see why; at least it’s consistent, and there are plenty of “just movies” out there already. People who like that stuff know what they’re getting, and people who don’t know what they’re missing.

They DID that, though.

How have they NOT done that...

It’s funny you say that though, regardless of what you believe, If I was Jesus, I wouldn’t exactly be fond of people wearing a half naked metal me being tortured on a cross, but that’s just me.

Commander Shepard is our Shepherd.

Microsoft doesn’t need any more studios. Play with the toys you already have before you look at other studios, Microsoft. You need to be grounded.

If their target was the merger... well, frankly I disagree, I don’t think Microsoft has made a strong case and the idea of it eating a major third-party publisher and developer improving competition in the market is laughable. But I can see it going either way in court.

It’s not very complicated: Microsoft is a direct competitor of many platforms where ABK games are popular. Owning those games gives it leverage over its competitors. CoD is the most obvious case but yanking, say, all the Blizzard games off of Steam, Epic, etc. would be another example. Now, granted, this would almost…

Rumors are that’s exactly what they’re prepared to do. Activision will pull out of the UK to an EU country and a 3rd party will have the right to sell the games within the UK for them, like Embracer. Then they wait out the CMA

The FTC has no authority to actually block mergers. They have to convince the federal court to block it. CMA does have the authority to block it in the sense that they can prohibit MS and Activision from operating in the U.K. If MS and Activision do go ahead with the merger, I’m not sure how they plan to deal with the…

You know... for the Christmas tree!

Just give us more Garrus body pillows bioware. KNow where your bread is buttered.

Good.

The FTC is sending MS a very loud signal that they think one party or another would hide something in the shuffle if the merger was allowed to go through.

Yeah, that’s definitely a big part of the problem, the Universification of everything. Franchises can be great within reason. There’s a lot of trilogies and such that I love, and as much of a mess as it was I generally enjoyed the Star Wars Expanded Universe. But sometimes my favorite stand outs are stand alones. Look…