Xbox CEO Matt Booty appears to have steered internally towards exclusivity of games. This contrasts with Microsoft’s public claims regarding the Activision Blizzard acquisition. Earlier today it was announced that Sony internally also contradicted its own public arguments.
During the FTC’s lawsuit against Microsoft, it appears that Booty, as head of Xbox Game Studios, responded very purposefully to exclusivity, so describes The Verge. A 2019 email from him shows that he wanted to ban Microsoft games from competing streaming services, specifically GeForce NOW; a strategy he called “a moat that no one can cross.” He firmly wrote, “We don’t release our first-party games on competing streaming services. No effing way.” Booty says during the lawsuit that his opinion has changed in the meantime.
Sony PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan told the Then-CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Chris Deering said the opposite: “Microsoft thinks bigger than exclusivity and they have the money to achieve this. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with both Phil Spencer and Bobby Kotick over the last few days and I’m pretty sure that Call of Duty will continue to come out for the PlayStation for years to come.” Both senior employees of the companies involved have internally shared opinions that contradict the public arguments put forward in the takeover case.
One of the main arguments put forward by Sony and the FTC is that with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard would hinder competition by releasing major games like Call of Duty exclusively for Microsoft platforms. Incidentally, Microsoft previously promised that the franchise would continue to be released for other platforms for at least ten years after approval of the acquisition. The European Commission indeed concluded that Microsoft would have no reason not to release Call of Duty games for the PlayStation and therefore decided to approve the acquisition. The American FTC and the British CMA are not yet convinced of this.
With the current FTC lawsuit, the legal battle between Microsoft and the American competition authority has started . According to Microsoft, this lawsuit could definitively determine whether the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $ 69 billion can go through or not.
