Day 2 of Microsoft vs the FTC has kicked off in model as the pinnacle of Xbox Phil Spencer took to the stand to ship his testimony. The continued battle is, in fact, because of the FTC trying to halt Microsoft’s deliberate acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.
Phil Spencer unleashed an attention-grabbing admission, revealing that one of many largest causes Microsoft purchased Zenimax in 2020 for $7.5 billion was to make sure Starfield wouldn’t be a PlayStation unique.
“Once we acquired ZeniMax, one of many impetus for that’s that Sony had executed a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire…to pay Bethesda to not ship these video games on Xbox,” Spencer mentioned. “So the dialogue about Starfield after we heard that Starfield was doubtlessly additionally going to finish up skipping Xbox, we are able to’t be able as a third-place console the place we fall additional behind on our content material possession so we’ve needed to safe content material to stay viable within the enterprise.”
A lot of Microsoft’s technique revolves across the thought of portraying Sony as an aggressive firm that makes an attempt to maintain as many third-party video games off of the Xbox as doable, although it could possibly be argued that such ways are utterly regular.
The FTC additionally grilled Spencer on their issues that Microsoft would make all future Activision-Blizzard video games unique to the Xbox. Spencer shot again that even when they did, Sony and Nintendo would nonetheless have way more exclusives.
“Sony has a major catalogue of unique video games. It’s drastically bigger, dramatically bigger than what we’ve got on Xbox at present. Each Sony and Nintendo’s first-party is stronger than Xbox.” said Spencer.
The FTC additionally requested Spencer if the subsequent Elder Scrolls sport could be an Xbox unique, to which Spencer replied that it was too early to make that call.
