(PressFire.no): In the ongoing legal dispute between Microsoft and the US competition authority FTC, where the former is trying to argue why they should be allowed to buy Activision Blizzard, a number of internal emails have appeared that show how the company has viewed the gaming industry in recent years.
In addition, several key people have now appeared before the judge, including Xbox boss Phil Spencer.
He explained, among other things, that Microsoft was in a hurry when several of Bethesda’s upcoming big games became exclusive to the PlayStation. Both “Deathloop” and “Ghostwire” received periods of exclusivity on Sony’s platform.
– When we bought ZeniMax (the owners of Bethesda, jour. note.) one of the reasons that Sony had made a deal for these games was to pay Bethesda not to release those games on Xbox, explained Spencer.
– So the discussion about “Starfield”, when we heard that it would potentially jump over Xbox as well, was that we couldn’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall even further behind on the content we own. So we had to secure the content in order to be competitive in the industry.
In an internal email from Spencer to a number of Microsoft managers (including CEO Satya Nadella), it appears that the company wanted to buy Sega.
Internal email from Phil Spencer.
– We believe Sega has built a well-balanced portfolio of games across segments that have global appeal, writes Spencer in the email, and asks for permission to start talks with the company.
Sega wasn’t the only company in the spotlight, though. Microsoft also ran the race to try and buy mobile giant Zynga – and was on the verge of doing so.
Much time was spent on the deal, but it eventually fell through. Take-Two ended up buying the studio instead.
– We needed something that was even bigger than Zynga as we had a very small starting point in the mobile industry, Spencer explained to the court.
Before Sony bought Bungie, it was also on the list of companies Microsoft was looking at buying, according to an internal document presented in court.
– The purchase of Bungie will secure us valuable brands, “Destiny” and the game’s community, Microsoft writes in the notes.
In the document, we also find acquisition candidates such as Supergiant Games (“Hades”), IO Interactive (“Hitman”) and Niantic (“Pokémon Go”), but no more was elaborated on these studios.
This article is written by our satire consultant Segata Satiro, and consequently only bamboo.
2023-06-27 18:14:00
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