Day one of the FTC’s federal case vs the Microsoft Activision deal has passed, and with it some surprising bombshells have dropped.
One of them corroborates something that Florian Mueller had let out early, although at the time he had not elaborated how he got this information.
A few days earlier, Florian wrote about Microsoft’s and Activision’s response to this case. He referred to a redacted section of the document, which Microsoft claimed was proof that Sony president Jim Ryan said something that disputed FTC’s argument to block the deal.
Florian then claimed what Jim said, was that he was confident Call of Duty would stay on PlayStation because of their market power.
Today, in federal court, Microsoft shared the contents of an email Jim sent on January 20, 2022. As reported by IGN, they shared this portion of the email:
“It’s not an Xbox exclusivity play at all. They’re thinking bigger than that, and they have the cash to make moves like this. I’ve spent a fair bit of time with both Phil and Bobby over the past day. I’m pretty sure we will continue to see COD on PS for many years to come.
We have some good stuff cooking. Keep your eyes peeled. I’m not complacent and I’d rather this hadn’t happened, but we’ll be OK, more than OK.”
To place this in further context, Jim sent that email two days before Microsoft made their plans to acquire Activision Blizzard King public.
This means Jim himself corroborates that Xbox and Activision leadership themselves talked to him as part of the process of their merger-acquisition deal. We can assume that the two talked to Jim, as a sign of good faith in business, and also hoping that Sony would not get in the way.
And this all brings everything full circle, as we now understand why Activision CEO Bobby Kotick wrote a public letter calling Sony’s behavior “disappointing”, and why their Chief Communications Officer Lulu Cheng Meservey made public that Jim just wants to block the merger. There was possibly a real sense of betrayal in Microsoft and Activision, after they had tried to communicate with Sony in good faith.
Microsoft added this statement they shared to IGN:
“Today showed Sony has known all along we’ll stand by our promise to keep games on its platform and made clear its work to lobby against the deal is only to protect its dominant position in the market.”
It just goes to show that just because this trial is being fast tracked to avoid impeding the Microsoft Activision deal, does not mean that we aren’t going to be getting some bizarre and shocking insider information out of it.
It’s also a harbinger for what we are set to learn in the next week.
