I do love it when people like this crawl out of the woodwork just to essentially defend a mega-conglomerate, though. Like let's look at all the bits here that Fnor's left context out of
1: The US Judge that saw it as "no problem"? Oh, that was Judge Corley, whose son works at Microsoft in a rather well-off position in the company. Of course "that" US judge saw no issue with it; she'd have to admit a conflict of interest otherwise. Granted, why the FTC didn't elect for her to recluse herself is a whole different question.
2: The other regulators? You mean like the EC, who had an ex-Microsoft employee attempting to run for a position in the cabinet which was so rare that exceptions were being made to allow her to be admitted? That European Commission? Again that's a convenient piece to ignore.
3: What exactly are the external market factors that have led to Game Pass's price increases and tier structure changes? I'm not even saying they don't exist, or didn't have a factor here. But for someone who wrote multiple paragraphs to "shed light", you didn't provide any examples of these yourself or how they affected Microsoft's gaming division to force these changes? You can't just say "hey this thing exists and is the real reason why!"...without giving examples for how the thing that exists specifically pertains to the case being discussed xD
4: What you're relying on as the "overall market conditions" being as to why Microsoft, Sony, and other companies have raised prices on their subscription services probably aren't actually the slam-dunk conditions you think they are. It doesn't take an educated guess to see that these companies increasing sub prices (most of them anyway) are doing it to increase profit margins.
The "market conditions" you want to point to are things like inflation, but in Microsoft's specific case inflation would have to be proven to lead towards increased costs of equipment for running the cloud and data centers hosting Game Pass content & services. That inflation costs are increasing the licensing fees for 3P content in the service. And in either case, people could just as easily argue why a price increase for the service (and removal of Day 1 for Standard/Console tier) was taken vs, say, cutting back on the number of 3P games licensed for being in the service? Particularly if the latter would've helped with costs on MS's end.
Also and this is both ironic and kind of messed up, but I can see the FTC or others asking why couldn't the operational costs for Game Pass be partially absorbed by other divisions in the company, if the costs for buying ABK were in a sense mostly done through profits the other divisions accrued? And with gaming now being so important to Microsoft now corporate-wide (this was something Microsoft pushed hard to get ABK approved), if Game Pass is also gaming and even new COD games are being used as a catalyst to push it...can't the same be argued about Game Pass?
5: I ultimately don't know why Fnor brings up Sony into the argument because, ultimately, Sony weren't the ones who just bought a $75 billion-worth 3P publisher on top of a $7.5 billion-worth 3P publisher back-to-back. They're not the ones who have those types of M&As to work against them in the event they do increase prices on something like PS+. Which, was also 100% done to increase profit margins, won't deny that. But thinking MS having a curious eye turned to them over increasing their prices should ignore their recent M&As in gaming, just because Sony also increased PS+ prices and didn't spend $75 billion on buying a 3P, is short-sighted.
That said, I'm sure MS will respond to the FTC with some form of "But Sony Too™", and probably also touch on other sub services like Netflix and Disney+ having raised their prices. They'd probably do it just so FTC or any others would feel pressured from obligation to look at ALL the subscription services, to just drop any further inquiries. I don't even think things will get that serious; again this is just the FTC having some commentary; MS will respond and the two will go back to doing what they've been doing.
