The last time we reviewed the legal battle surrounding Activision Blizzard’s proposed $69 billion sale, Sony complained about “harassment” by Microsoftasking to see all types of records, emails and internal documentation as part of the case discovery process.
As game developer reportHowever, FTC Chief Administrative Judge D. Michael Chappell has dismissed most (though not all) of Sony’s complaints, meaning Microsoft is about to gain access to a ton of “relevant documents” that PlayStation isn’t releasing wanted from his antitrust attorney’s external emails to a series of senior vice president’s documents to the notes of former
What is most interesting, however – and I say this on a personal basis, not because I’m any kind of law enforcement officer –is that from the FTC
Microsoft argues that the lawsuit in this case includes a number of allegations regarding exclusivity agreements between high-performance video game console developers and video game publishers. Microsoft states that it is aware that SIE requires many third-party publishers to agree to exclusivity terms, including preventing the publishers from putting their games on Xbox’s multi-game subscription service, and that they fully understand SIE’s and understanding their impact on the competitiveness of the industry will help to defend it.
Judge Chappell says this is because “the nature and extent of [Sony’s] Content license agreements are relevant to the complaint’s allegations of exclusivity agreements between video game console developers and video game developers and publishers.”
In other words, Microsoft is free to find out how much Sony pays publishers to keep games off Game Pass and find out any other details or conditions involved in putting a game on any Xbox platform or service at the expense of it bring PlayStation console.
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I know corporate stuff is usually pretty damn boring, but this is one of those rare exceptions where I think it would see some numbers – and those numbers would certainly be released at court hearings fascinating. Seeing games become exclusive or conditional directly affects us as fans and customers. It would be nice to know how much money is changing hands to make sure this happens!
Note, however, that if Microsoft decides to go ahead with this, they will not release an all-time compendium; They are limited to deals made after January 1, 2019 (mainly to limit the workload of searching records), so any revelations can only include exclusivity agreements made after that date.
