Correct to a point but Microsoft could purchase Sony and not have it be a monopoly. They would most likely have to divest or sell off the Xbox division since they would effectively have the vast market share between those two gaming networks. Microsoft purchasing Apple for example would be considered a monopoly. PS and Xbox are only small parts of very large companies.

I'm speaking from a realistic point of view. If Microsoft ever bought Sony out they would have no reason to even make play stations anymore and a new console will be made by the both companies (because they're both independently owned by one company). Also the servers and live services would merge too. No reason to have dead servers from a broken company they wanna make money from this deal.

Right so a judge would probably tell Microsoft to sell Xbox before they could purchase Sony. Or they would purchase Sony and have the Play Station division be it's own separate company. But saying that there's no way Microsoft could purchase Sony because of gaming is probably a stretch. ;)

[quote]Microsoft would own both of the largest online gaming communities servers. That is a monopoly.[/quote] Not a barrier to entry though. Just having the largest is not argument enough. Merck has the world's largest commercial shipping fleet by far. It's not a monopoly though. And I can garentee that getting into the shipping business is much harder than online gaming. I'm speaking from a my personal legal experience with a degree from Gpc with heavy coursework in legal environment of business. Do some west law research into the delta northwest merger

I'm curious now. in this respect, by barrier to entry, do you mean by other companies creating consoles? I thought that a monopoly was the control of a single person or entity of a market. As two superior consoles (and I say this because I'm of the opinion that they would out-perform the Wii), if one acquired the other and was rendered obsolete, wouldn't that monopolise the gaming market? For instance, as a game developer, my game will require certain hardware specifications to run correctly. Is my understanding incorrect?

Barriers are about feasibility to get into the market. but there are 3 things that are of note in this situation 1. Its very easy for a firm to create a console, its just the os really (a high barrier would be something requiring a billion dollar investment or something) lets remove sony and nintendo from the picture, lets say wiped out for whatever reason. The barriers to create a console are so low that any small firm could build one, look at steam box, oya ect. 2. While monopoly's may exists, the government will only step in if the cost of products/services rendered outweigh the net social benefits they produce. And gaming dosent really produce a major social benefit, while Phone service does "att forced to split" 3. that's tricky. if they are charging a exorbitant amount of money to use there proprietary and hard to compete with (see point 1) hardware yes, id say that it might be something to look into legally, Microsoft got nailed for this once. But if its something like a proprietary thing like motion control, Im not sure. Thing is with this kind of law is that its a lot of research and arguing. And while I do have no problem covering the surface. I dont care to spend hours on end for a forum discussion right now. "no offense" I did hope I covered some of the big ideas though