With no disrespect intended, I replied to your original comment to point out that you oversimplified something more complicated than you think it is and how that can lead you wrong conclusions. All your replies so far just seem to be reinforcing that this isn’t something you have a good grasp on.

Could you answer the question, please? Which company do you think will dominate the entire supply chain if this purchase goes through?

Which company do you think will dominate “the entire supply chain” if this purchase goes through? This purchase won’t even create a new market leader. You’ve built a nice straw man, but that’s all it is.

That’s a bit of an oversimplification though. If quantity were the only (or even primary) measure of competition, then a market where Microsoft had 95% of it and ten competitors were each at 0.5% would be more competitive than a market with five competitors at 20% each. And if reducing the quantity of competitors in a…

As a former Kotaku AU reader, losing Serrels, Alex Walker and now you is an enormous blow to some really good writing.

I think Microsoft has been better at eschewing exclusives than Sony or Nintendo, certainly, but it’s been disappointing to see them lean more into it recently with things like Starfield.

It’s an interesting question. Some studies have found that even some people with congenital limb loss experience phantom limbs (>20%) and that rises to 50% for amputations under the age of 6. It lends some credence to the idea that the brain has at least some hardwiring that expects a certain ‘baseline’ configuration…

What are you talking about? The claim is correct that limiting the availability of games to specific stores or launchers has a demonstrable detrimental effect on sales. It’s not just battle.net and CoD, EA and Ubisoft also experienced fallen sales figures after making their games launcher exclusive.

There are definitely some cowards who know their opinions are trash so they’ve made alt accounts to voice them instead and then star them so they’re ungreyed. I’m only aware of one instance when someone who was consistently bringing bad comments out of the greys got greyed himself.

Sure, and people mistake surgical antiseptic as a “mouth wash” and textured plastic wallpaper as a “packing wrap”. Just because it started one way doesn’t mean its usage hasn’t evolved since.

I know some people in the replies here have stated they have no problem with consolidation, and of course others do have a problem. I don’t know that I fall into either camp other than to grumble that capitalism sucks.

How will it have that effect?

Sorry, an edit I made made the numbers unclear. Sony has been acquiring companies for decades - in the last ten years they acquired over $20B in companies and another 41 acquisitions with a hidden price.

No, it doesn’t matter who up the parent chain makes the purchase and it certainly doesn’t matter if the parent has 50 vs 100 times the annual revenue of the company being bought. What matters is the effect it has on the markets the business operates in, now and in the future.

Microsoft, which is twice as big as Sony

The main campaign generally has a lower XP per hour rate than some other activities, so where speed is preferred people will typically go after the higher rate activities.

Would appropriation (in the privacy sense) apply here? I’m not sure whether voice is included in its scope.

Maybe this is one you should let go. Dissolving your comments in an acid bath of condescension and pretentious gatekeeping and then posting the resulting detritus is speaking more to your apparent lack of awareness of the material than to your opinions on its alleged lack of merit.

But whenever I see people trying to give it the “it is amazing and poignant and deep” shit I just lose it.

It doesn’t look like the sub is shutting down, it seems Mojang is just pulling out of using it as an official channel for updates and feedback. From what I can see, the sub will still continue to run.