On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission pointed to Microsoft’s recent pricing overhaul of Xbox Game Pass as evidence of the harm its merger with Activision Blizzard has had on consumers. The agency filed a new letter in its ongoing appeal of last year’s deal, calling the changes “exactly the sort of consumer harm…
Okay, but is the FTC just going to ignore Microsoft directly linking to GeForce Now in the Xbox Store on PC, where they literally directly link to a competing streaming service on games that GeForce Now supports? Wasn’t anti-competitive practice like the main argument the FTC had against the ActiBlizz merger? Raising prices isnt exactly anti-competitive, and directly linking to a competing service on your own platform is the polar opposite of anti-competition.
Prices go up all the time. Yes it sucks, but the American economy turbo sucks right now. Everything is overly expensive. Price increases are expected, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go up again soon if the economy keeps dying. Microsoft can’t be expected to freeze their pricing on everything to 2010 pricing in a dying economy forever like the FTC seems to make it out to be. Realistically the FTC just wants to get the fine money from a legal win, they don’t actually care about consumers.