Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing time, June 28 morning news, it is reported that Microsoft's plan to spend a lot of money to acquire the game giant Activision Blizzard, the US antitrust agency Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit to "hinder market competition". As a strong evidence of the plaintiff, a senior executive of Sony, a Japanese game console manufacturer, said a few days ago that Microsoft's acquisition plan will deal a heavy blow to Sony's game console business. And damage the experience of PS players.

FTC's lawsuit against Microsoft continued in a federal district court in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, local time, and the court will decide whether to press the "suspend button" on the acquisition plan. On the same day, James Lane (James Ryan), head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, testified by video that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard was a bad thing for competition in the game market.

Earlier, FTC filed an antitrust lawsuit against US social media giant Meta, hoping to prevent the company from acquiring a virtual reality software maker, but the case failed miserably. It is believed that the next FTC lawsuit against Microsoft is crucial and will prove whether the regulator has the ability to stop mergers and acquisitions that could affect market competition.

Ryan said he judged that Microsoft might use Activision Blizzard's popular game call of Duty to weaken the company as a competitor in the future. For example, Microsoft could cancel some or even all of the licenses for the PS game console.

Lane said Microsoft could damage the user experience of call of Duty's PS console, put Sony users at a disadvantage, and even encourage them to join Microsoft's Xbox gaming service, such as buying Microsoft's own game content member "Game Pass".

Ryan's testimony reinforces FTC's allegations against Microsoft that the acquisition will hurt Microsoft's competitors in console games and cloud games, where players stream video over the Internet and enjoy games running on large servers. FTC also alleges that Sony's PS is currently in a dominant position and that Microsoft may refuse to provide Activision Blizzard games to PS.

In response to Ryan's testimony, a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement that Microsoft hopes to bring the game market to a new stage in the future, that is, so that players on different platforms can enjoy the game content, but Sony only wants to consolidate its dominant position. The spokesman also said that Microsoft executives have also testified in court to prove that the merger and acquisition is good for gamers.

Representatives of Sony's PS business have yet to comment.

If it can win the antitrust lawsuit, Microsoft is expected to successfully beat Activision Blizzard to become the third place in the global game market, after Tencent and Sony.

Lane also mentioned that before Microsoft bought game maker ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2020, Sony had hoped that ZeniMax's role-playing games, such as Star and the upcoming Scroll 6, would also be available to PS console users.

It is reported that FTC's submission of Ryan's video testimony is actually countering Microsoft's evidence. Last week, Microsoft disclosed an email to the court in which Ryan said that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard would not bring an exclusive monopoly on content and would not damage Sony's PS business.

Last week, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox games business, testified that the call of Duty game would continue to be licensed to PS after the acquisition, and that Microsoft had not yet made a decision on whether to license the Ancient Scroll 6 game to PS.

Spencer and a team of Microsoft lawyers also appeared in court on Tuesday, and Spencer was expressionless when Ryan's video testimony was broadcast.

In court, FTC also submitted email communications from two Microsoft game executives three and a half years ago: Matt Booty, head of Xbox game studios, and Tim Stuart, chief financial officer of Xbox. FTC pointed out that the email exchange between the two men shows that Microsoft is prepared to use its strong financial strength to crowd out gaming rivals, including Sony.

In an email at the end of 2019, Booty mentioned that Microsoft is in a unique position to spend more money to squeeze Sony out of the market.

Booty also wrote that if Microsoft thinks the game market is very important in the next decade, Microsoft may one day look back and realize that it was worth losing $2 billion or $3 billion in the game market in 2020. this can prevent Tencent, Amazon, Google and even Sony from becoming the "Disney of the game market" and preventing them from monopolizing the vast majority of premium games.

A Microsoft spokesman stressed that Buti wrote the email two years and a month earlier than Activision Blizzard announced its acquisition plans.

A Microsoft spokesman said that Buti's words in the email referred to a trend in the game market, which Microsoft never acted on, and had nothing to do with the subsequent Activision Blizzard acquisition.

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