What is the significance of Cynthia and Stans discussion?

Stan is a white man of German descent in his fifties. In 2000, he’s the bartender at the bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, where most of the play takes place. Stan became the bartender after losing part of his leg in an accident at Olstead’s Steel Tubing mill, where he worked (like previous generations of his family did) for 28 years. Now, Stan serves as a beloved friend, confidant, and wise sage for his regular customers—including the play’s other main characters, Chris, Jason, Tracey, Cynthia, Brucie, and Jessie. Stan is also the only one who’s friendly to Oscar, the bar’s Colombian American busboy. Stan is perhaps the most cynical of the play’s characters: he distrusts white-collar management and career politicians, and he declares that it’s “not a good philosophy to resist knowledge” or to blindly trust authority figures. But unlike most of the play’s other characters, who hold staunch, polarized beliefs about personal and social issues, Stan seeks to understand and empathize with everyone who sits across the bar from him and confides in him about their problems. Sadly, Stan’s concern for others has life-altering consequences for him: when he tries to intervene in a fight between Chris, Jason, and Oscar, Jason inadvertently hits Stan with a baseball bat. This causes Stan to fall and hit his head on the bar, sustaining a traumatic brain injury that permanently hinders his speech, hearing, and movement. Eight years later, Stan has become the busboy at bar, while Oscar is the new manager and weekend bartender. Stan’s tragic fate is symbolic of how economic strife and racial animosity (the reasons behind why Chris and Jason attacked Oscar) can radiate outward to affect innocent people.

Microsoft has responded to a list of concerns regarding its ongoing $68bn attempt to buy Activision Blizzard, as raised by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and come up with an interesting statistic.

In response to continued questions over whether Microsoft owning Call of Duty would unfairly hobble PlayStation, Microsoft claimed that every COD player on PlayStation could move over to Xbox, and Sony's playerbase would still remain "significantly larger" than its own.

Microsoft does not go into detail on its mental arithmetic here, but does note elswhere in its comments that PlayStation currently has a console install base of 150 million, compared to Xbox's install base of 63.7 million.

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That claim is part of a range of comments given to Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz in response to the CMA's latest report, which otherwise mostly repeats many of the same concerns raised by the UK regulator - and others around the world - already.

For those following the case, the CMA's latest intervention will not come as a surprise - it is the next step on the regulator's recent roadmap for how and when it will weigh in with its final ruling. This month, we were due the CMA's October "issues statement" - and it seems that this is the document to which Microsoft has now publicly responded.

The usual topics are covered - surrounding the potential for the deal to harm competitors should Microsoft gain too much of an advantage owning Activision Blizzard franchises (mainly, Call of Duty) and therefore being able to leverage their brand power to become a dominant market leader in the console market and cloud streaming.

Specifically, the CMA sees potential for the deal to harm Sony but also other streaming services such as Google (perhaps a moot point now), Amazon and Nvidia.

"Having full control over this powerful catalogue, especially in light of Microsoft's already strong position in gaming consoles, operating systems, and cloud infrastructure, could result in Microsoft harming consumers by impairing Sony's – Microsoft's closest gaming rival – ability to compete," the CMA wrote, "as well as that of other existing rivals and potential new entrants who could otherwise bring healthy competition through innovative multi-game subscriptions and cloud gaming services."

In response, Microsoft said such "unsupported theories of harm" were not enough to even warrant the CMA's current Phase 2 investigation - which was triggered on 1st September.

"The suggestion that the incumbent market leader, with clear and enduring market power, could be foreclosed by the third largest provider as a result of losing access to one title is not credible," Microsoft told GamesIndustry.biz.

"While Sony may not welcome increased competition, it has the ability to adapt and compete. Gamers will ultimately benefit from this increased competition and choice.

"Should any consumers decide to switch from a gaming platform that does not give them a choice as to how to pay for new games (PlayStation) to one that does (Xbox), then that is the sort of consumer switching behavior that the CMA should consider welfare enhancing and indeed encourage. It is not something that the CMA should be trying to prevent."

The CMA is due to notify Microsoft of its provisional findings in January 2023, at which point it can seek possible remedies to any sticking points raised. The regulator's final report - and overall ruling - will then be published no later than 1st March next year.

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