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Microsoft is facing a tough time buying Activision. (Reuters)
An alleged internal Microsoft email, which is evidence in a lawsuit in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court, suggests that one of the intentions behind Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision-Blizzard is“ to put its main competition, the Sony PlayStation, out of the market.”
An alleged internal Microsoft email, which is evidence in a lawsuit in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court, suggests that one of the intentions behind Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision-Blizzard is“ to put its main competition, the Sony PlayStation, out of the market.”
As reported by Axios, the alleged email sent in 2019 by Microsoft’s head of Xbox game studios, Matt Booty to CFO for Xbox, Tim Stuart, was before Microsoft’s announcement to buy Activision-Blizzard.
Axios notes that the “passage appears to be from Exhibit K,” which is “a sealed document that the gamers’ lawyers and Microsoft’s attorneys have been arguing over.”
Axios has also received confirmation from a Microsoft representative that the purported email was indeed sent by Kotick in 2019, but its contents cannot be disclosed.
It must be noted this evidence is not a part of the Federal Trade Commission’s bid to block the deal, but in a separate lawsuit by “a group of gamers suing to block the deal over antitrust concerns.”
It remains to be seen if these developments would impact the deal in the long term. However, the Judge overseeing the case, Jacqueline Corley, has introduced a short-term hold on the merger—a move that Microsoft believes could potentially put the deal at risk of dissolving.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Xbox chief Phil Spencer, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, and Sony Computer Interactive CEO Jim Ryan are among the witnesses scheduled to testify at a five-day hearing on the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. The hearing will begin on June 22 and end on June 29.
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