I saw a couple of new articles about the case (from The Information and Fortune), but same old, same old. At least if by the end of they day there is no new info, we'll know that the FTC didn't vote yet.
Do you think it's a bad look that Valve, Nintendo signed these deals without them thinking COD is so important, yet Sony who has made it very clear that they would be unable to compete if the deal goes through, didn't bother? wouldn't it be risky if they actually think they couldn't compete and rely on a 3rd party regulator with their fate?
I think that for Sony it would be worse to change course so late into the game. If regulators approve the deal, they can always say that they accept the decision but wholeheartedly disagree. And who knows, maybe in 5 years cloud gaming/subscription services are so dominated by MS that Sony can say: "See! I told you that you were wrong".
Something like that could generate a new investigation in the future. After all, mergers aren't forever.
But if now they agree to the offer, after building a case for so long, that would burn a lot of goodwill from the parties that helped them/listened to them and generate bad reputation. Besides, they don't have an incentive in the short - mid term, maybe in the long term (but that won't be before the next generation). And one more thing, they have made MS say soooo many times (in public and private) that they won't remove COD from Playstation that if that changes someday (even in the distant future) Sony is going to hit them with that non stop.
So, for Sony is better to wait until the end (trying to negotiate with MS, but with no real intent to agree) and see what happens.
The agreements with Nintendo and Valve are obviously good for MS. They are trying to downplay again the importance of COD ("See? If I thought that COD was so important, why would I shared it with my competitors?") and it's also useful to show that they don't have an incentive to make it exclusive ("I'm not buying COD to make it exclusive, I'm going to share it even on more platforms"). It also helps them to fight the arguments from Sony.
The followup questions from regulators should be: but are you going to share the game with Nintendo and Steam only on the buy-to-play model or also on any future cloud/ subscription service? Because if you are sharing it only in one scenario maybe you do have an incentive to make COD exclusive. :s MS will say that cloud gaming is irrelevant and not a real market yet and that subscription services are just another means of payment, not a market (and even in that case, they aren't the biggest one), and back to square one :p
In any case, those agreements are good for MS.
What do you think is implied in both of those scenarios?
I just thought it was funny that she said that on the same day that MS was meeting with her to approve a deal where cloud is an important issue :p
By now the FTC must have a pretty good idea of the case and where they stand. Now they have to asses pros and cons and make a decision.