Chook Chook thinking

Yes, I could have said ‘train of thought’ but that would be too obvious, wouldn’t it. The thought came from two articles. The two articles set my mind in motion and they are not related in any way, other then the provider of both articles which is Reuters. The first article (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-regulation-tencent-m-a/chinese-antitrust-regulator-blocks-tencents-5-3-billion-video-games-merger-idUSKCN2EG029) gave me ‘Chinese antitrust regulator blocks Tencent’s $5.3 billion video games merger’, I have nothing really to add, other then the thoughts I had wondering what the antitrust regulators were thinking. I am not saying, or implying that anything wrong was done. The ‘official’ version is “Antitrust laws are statutes developed by governments to protect consumers from predatory business practices and ensure fair competition” that is the official version, unofficial it is that competitors use their version of the excuse “to protect consumers” into a version of “stopping competitors with actual innovative inventions to get the upper hand over their need for revenue (read: greed)”, Google has been the most clear victim but they are definitely not alone. In the article we see that it is about Tencent Holdings Ltd’s and the merger of Huya and DouYu. If the merger goes through we get a setting where their combined market share in the video game live streaming industry would be over 70%. So I am not sure what to think, I do not know whether it is valid or not. It was merely an article that  got my attention. 

The second article is ‘FTC extends probe of Amazon, MGM deal’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mgm-m-a-amazon/ftc-extends-probe-of-amazon-mgm-deal-source-idUSKCN2EF2EF). There we see “Amazon.com’s deal to buy movie studio MGM for $8.5 billion is headed for an extended probe by the Federal Trade Commission, after a source familiar with the matter said on Friday the agency had issued a second request in its review of the merger”, so there is no connection there, and there will not be one. But the two articles made me think on what else Amazon could do. They do have the inside Track at present and if they push they could do titles that all others are not considering. To see this, we need to go back to 1983 then ‘Dragon’s Lair’ took the breath away from nearly everyone who saw it, it was an arcade machine and a laserdisc. No one had done it before and it took the cake, now on streaming no laserdisc is required, with MGM, Amazon has the option of launching a whole range of interactive movies. James Bond might be the most visible one, but when we consider the size of their IP which also includes the Hobbit, TombRaider and a few others, we can see that interactive movies have an option, and Amazon will own it all. The larger station is not merely interactive movies, but it is a play style that Sony and Microsoft added to their games, they merely forgot to make games like that. They did nothing wrong, they added flavour to their games. Yet Dragon’s Lair showed that a game like that is possible. In 1995 Tia Carrere added to this with The Daedalus Encounter, it started on 3DO but it did get on PC on the early age of VGA and CDROM systems with often no more than 300KB/s. Now with the consoles and streaming systems coming we can do a lot more and now we see that Amazon might be holding on to a lot more and even if the FTC tries to block it, it is merely a temporary setback, Amazon has the inside track and when the others consider this they might wake up and take old ideas into innovative new internet streaming highways. 

As I said, it was merely a train of thought, but so far the others aren’t showing their actions and that is before Netflix steps into the ring, consider what they have and what they would be able to push for, the innovative player takes the cake, that has been proven by Sony and by Microsoft in the past, and with the bar set to $195,000,000,000 in 2022, do you think that the innovators are going to let slip any sliver of a pie that big? What are you thinking?

As stated it is merely a train of thought, but is it that far fetched when you think of what we can now achieve?