"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "
Game Pass is already profitable, as said by Phil Spencer.
The goal with game pass is to have enough subscribers giving guaranteed revenue to finance all their first party games for the year along with the payouts for third party games. Once a person is subscribed and in the ecosystem, Microsoft then get 30% of every third party game and DLC they buy. That’s where the real money is. Game Pass is there to get them hooked. With MS’s goals of 4 AAA first party games a year, they need say $400-$600mil in revenue from game pass a year for that. They’re already over half the number of subscriptions needed for the upper end of that revenue @$15/month. Adding COD will make that number explode.