Microsoft responds to FTC lawsuit: don't know why Activision Blizzard's call of Duty is so special
According to news in the morning of January 3, Beijing time, Microsoft's lawyer recently suddenly said that Microsoft does not know why Activision Blizzard's "call of Duty" is so special, or even when it was originally released.
In January last year, Microsoft announced that it would buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, stressing that the acquisition would help the company acquire several "iconic games IP", including call of Duty, Warcraft and Candy Crush Legend. Subsequently, gamers and regulators worried that Microsoft might stop offering the call of Duty series on Sony's PlayStation platform. Recently, Microsoft's lawyer suddenly said that Microsoft doesn't know why call of Duty is so special, or even when it was originally released.
Earlier, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tried to block Microsoft's acquisition through a lawsuit. Microsoft then responded to FTC with a 37-page response, including the following:
Microsoft claims that there is a lack of sufficient knowledge or information to determine that the industry view about call of Duty and its initial release date is true, or about the release and typical release schedule of call of Duty, and Activision's resources and budget allocated to call of Duty, including the number of studios working on call of Duty development. "
Microsoft's argument is hardly convincing. Most of the information Microsoft requires FTC to prove can be searched on Google, and Microsoft must have a lot of details, including the budget of each studio working on call of Duty and the approximate number of employees.
First of all, Activision Blizzard will provide these details in the due diligence of the deal before Microsoft announced that it would buy Activision Blizzard. Second, Microsoft will do a lot of research even if Activision Blizzard doesn't offer it. For example, with regard to the lawsuit between Epic and Apple, Microsoft's Game Business Planning and Strategy team produced a 67-page document detailing all Microsoft's major competitors and even estimating a lot of non-public information, such as Sony's PlayStation Now cloud games business with revenue of $359 million in 2019.
As a result, Microsoft is probably playing dumb. Although Phil Spencer, Microsoft's head of games, has repeatedly insisted that call of Duty will continue to be offered through competitors' game consoles, promoting call of Duty as a Xbox exclusive game has always been a topic of great interest to Microsoft.
Nintendo and Microsoft have reached an agreement to keep call of Duty on the Nintendo platform for 10 years after Activision Blizzard is acquired. Microsoft also offered Sony a 10-year extension after Sony previously rejected a three-year extension. Sony has yet to respond to the new plan.
