FTC Vs Microsoft Thread

I am a Sony Professional, i knew this for generations, but i don't bash Sony because they're my saviours.

@hardwenzen: And yet you just did, how unprofessional of you.

It was soft n gentle. Just to let them know what's up.

Some really damn funny stuff coming out these last couple of days. 😂

@hardwenzen: You said "Sony are a bunch of bitches as well🤦‍♂️Who knew."

So...

A) You didn't know.

And

B) calling them bitches is not gentle.

Wanna try again?

I am calling you a little bitch all the time, and i am being very gentle😎

@hardwenzen: Even after all these years your trolling is still subpar 🙄

Is this how you're desperately trying to get my attention?

What's really crucial for the FTC on these proceedings is to convince the the judge to issue the preliminary injunction and the threshold for that is really high, they have to prove a vertical market foreclosure and that's not happening with what the FTC has presented to the judge, and given that the FTC's courtroom performance has been extremely lackluster, the judge likely won't grant the preliminary injunction, and thus when these proceedings end MS and ABK might finalize this deal with a workaround for the CMA.

The FTC will likely appeal but without a PI they're not going to be able to stop it. They can appeal and drag out Microaoft's legal team but it will happen post merger.

After the judge Friday cut the FTC off multiple times from their desperate cross examination of Phil Spencer, I'd be very curious if the judge still wants to waste 3 more days watching the FTC trip over themselves, fidget with their papers unsure of how they want to proceed. Their own lawyers don't even appear prepared to argue their case, it's embarassing.

Microsoft might at some point might even have an opportunity given how the proceedings have played out over the last two days to ask for a summary judgment, but given how things have gone I wouldn't be surprised after today's horrible performance if the judge is going to dismiss the case on their own than let the FTC waste their time.

Overall, the it's looking more and more likely this merger is happening very soon.

@lamprey263: Are you following the case?

That's some interesting spin of what Phil said.

Jim Ryan 1 day after the ABK purchase was announced: "I have no fear that Microsoft will remove COD from PS, that's not their play."

Jim Ryan later to FTC and regulators across the world: "OMG! Microsoft is going to pull COD from PlayStation and force us out of business!"

Jim Ryan to CMA: "If this goes through, PlayStation will receive inferior versions of Call of Duty!"

Also Jim Ryan: We will not share SKUs with Activision if the goes through, so they won't be able to take advantage of the features of future PlayStation consoles."

The guy is a clown.

He is the lead Clown for the sea of clowns here known as Sony Fan.

This whole thing is Sony paying people off and crying about their best game being bought.

I am going to love seeing Sony burn. They have totally proven they deserve it.

@last_lap: "Are you following the case?"

Yes. I mostly been keeping tabs with Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents coverage on Twitter who is giving the play-by-play from the courthouse.

He basically kept the scope simple from the get-go, the FTC's burden is to prove both MS plans for vertical market foreclosure and that it would be harmful to the market. The FTC basically won't by reasonable expected (even before evidentary hearings began) to provide sufficient evidence to convince a judge a preliminary injunction is necessary to prevent such an outcome. They were granted the temporary restraining order while the preliminary injunction was decided. But without the ability to show MS plans vertical market foreclosure (because the contested games are multiplatform and remedies are in place) or that a vertical market foreclosure would harm the market (also not likely given the shape of the market between competitors) the preliminary injunction will not likely be granted.

This whole play by the FTC was designed to stall for time and still is. They don't have a strong case to prevent the merger so they're trying to prevent the merger by dragging it out legally in hopes of blocking it until both parties lose interest in the merger and the merger agreement falls apart. This recent action was more promted by concerns the merger was going to close with a CMA workaround and they were probably right about that. But this decision was hasty, and just goes to show the FTC's objections to the merger lack merit, and they can only hope to block it by burdening the merger parties with delay.

@dabear: It's almost like since then MS has stopped games that were coming to ps consoles and kept them off instead. Crazy stuff!

They are all saying whatever BS they can to get what they want, both sides.

Sooner people who still don't see this get it, the better

@Chutebox: "It's almost like since then MS has stopped games that were coming to ps consoles and kept them off instead. Crazy stuff! They are all saying whatever BS they can to get what they want, both sides. Sooner people who still don't see this get it, the better"

Microsoft has kept to their word about the ZeniMax/Bethesda merger. They'd honor previous commitments already made to PlayStation (i.e. Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo), but anything after could have Microsoft console/ecosystem exclusivity and that was always clear with regulators.

With the ABK merger, since remedies and contracts were necessary to get to regulatory approval, these were for COD, as well as licensing COD to cloud services, Microsoft will likely stick to whatever commitments they've agreed to contractually. They're legally binding and not sticking to them will have consequences.

That being said the COD situation is gray with PS console and Sony. Microsoft has offered Sony 10 year deal but Sony never accepted one in hopes to hold the merger up. Microsoft's commitment to keep it on PS consoles is more financially driven but isn't guaranteed commitment. Not putting it on PS consoles wouldn't constitute a market foreclosure as they still have commitments to Nintendo and cloud services. I see no immediate convlcern MS will yank COD from PS anytime soon. However, during a generational transition, it might seem a compelling enough reason possibly. Without Sony securing a solid commitment there is no guarantee.

Honestly the only thing I'd argue MS might have a hard time keeping to their word is with regard for COD support on Nintendo systems. Activision in past has worked magic getting COD games ported to every kind of system even weaker hardware like Wii, but, this could be challenging to keep to a 10 year commitment there.

@lamprey263: Is Sony going to have to reveal its exclusivity deals that MS requested in its subpeona?

@last_lap: "Is Sony going to have to reveal its exclusivity deals that MS requested in its subpeona?"

Depends on whether the judge empties the court room to keep that information privileged during discussion, or whether MS and FTC lawyers bring up the evidence during cross-examination with witnesses where members of the court audience can relay details to the public. Still, lawyers might be limited to what they can say specifically to public in meantime. Forget specifics but one of the FTC lawyers slipped up I think when discussing the revenue split renegotiation with COD on Xbox, not necessarily that it happened but they weren't supposed to disclose some actual figure in an open courtroom. Details can slip but likely the judge has ordered both parties not to discuss certain priveldge details in current proceedings.

Not sure how and when such an opportunity will present itself on Sony's subpoenaed documents. Sony didn't send anybody to testify, just deposition materials. This is the evidentary hearing though, mostly this is solely to establish whether the judge will grant the FTC the preliminary injunction to prevent the merger until administrative hearings are concluded weeks later.

If FTC fails to get a PI, MS and ABK could potentially finalize deal before the administrative hearings, but the administrative hearings will still happen regardless. I'd guess if MS is going to air Sony's dirty laundry, it'll be at the administrative hearings.

@lamprey263: I'm just interested in seeing Sony get its exclusivity deals revealed, that will show how hypocritical they are. The rest i'm not really interested in. MS getting Activision has no benefit to me as I don't play their games and haven't for the past 2 gens. So to me that subpoena is the only thing interesting about this whole drawn out process.

@last_lap: well, simply put it'd be in the administrative hearings

Aside from potential for details of Sony's exclusivity arrangements coming out in FTC administrative hearings, they could also potentially come out if US trade representatives ever follow up on the bipartisan request from Congress to investigate violation of trade agreements between US and Japan not to enforce anti-competitive practices regarding the console market in Japan, and Sony shutting out Xbox by excessive use of exclusivity arrangements.

Here goes... Day 2:

@last_lap: I am following the case. It's very interesting.

@dabear: THIS is what you consider as interesting? Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

Look at Phil smiling and in a suit and everything. Looking like a “Chad” as the kids would say. 😅

@hardwenzen: It's not at all. It has been interesting to see these high ranking members of the industry take the stand and air dirty laundry.

It was quite telling how Jim Ryan flew overseas to make Sony's case, but couldn't be bothered to show up for this FTC hearing.

It's interesting to see the back and forth about Nintendo.

The whole thing is interesting, sorry if you are too much of a Sony Pony to see that.

Literally the worst subject related to gaming in over 15 years, and you find it interesting. Not surprising tbh.

Sales threads = AWESOME... But this somehow isn't interesting? :-S

Cows man... Cows.

Never have i cared about sales🤷‍♂️That is another subject that i couldn't care less about, but is very popular on SW.

@hardwenzen: bro, all you do is talk about sales and Steam player counts.

Steam players, graphics, frame rate, goty awards, meta scores, gs scores and twitch numbers is my spcialty. Couldn't care less about sales, but people always bring them up to damage control their shit games.

Dang, Sony is a shady company.

@dabear: The only thing of interest for me is if the subpeona MS served Sony to reveal its exclusivity deals over the past 5yrs gets aired in court.

The rest is just stuff to give the useless YouTubers content for the next few weeks.

I also don't care if they buy them or not because I haven't bought a game from them since the early 360 days as they don't make anything I want to play.

Seriously, if this deal goes through, do not be surprised if Sony retaliates with a similar purchase with a popular Japanese studio that has stuff on Xbox. Like Bandai Namco, who already have made licensed games based on anime under Sony's labels (Funimation/Crunchyroll, etc). Phil even admitted the Bethesda buyout was a retaliation of Sony's antics too.

I hope Sony acquires Nintendo if this deal goes through. The amount of malding from Nintendboy16 would be legendary. Would pay money to see it☺

@nintendoboy16: Sony won't be buying Bandai as they don't make live service games lol.

I had no idea how accurate it was when we were saying "Sony brought this on themselves", with all the exclusivity deals they were buying up.

According to Sony, "They'll be fine... They'll be more than fine".

As long as they get CoD, this really won't effect them and they know it. Activision wastes so much of their resources on CoD anyway. They have like six studios that work on it.

I maintain that Xbox will likely benefit more from Blizzard. That was always the interesting part of the deal to me.

Sony don't need to buy Namco. As long as they can continue to get away with exclusivity deals, they really don't need to buy anyone. Be honest, I'm more surprised SF6 was multiplat. They've gotten a bit too aggressive with exclusivity deals imo.

With Sony making a bunch of Final Fantasy exclusive, there's zero chance MS will allow Elder Scrolls 6 to release on Playstation, despite what they just said in court. That's why they were vague like "it's way too early".

Sony is number 1, they have the biggest market share, there really isn't a need for them to strangle the competition. But because we've been trained to accept exclusivity deals as harmless since console gaming began, they don't look like the bad guy.

This completely negates all previous “good guy” statements from Xbox.

Also this,

“The email is part of a thread discussing Xbox Game Pass, with the rest of the chain redacted. But it looks like Microsoft was considering reversing the idea of day and date releases of its own games on Xbox Game Pass in 2019 — something Booty wasn’t happy about. “If we reverse course on day and date, it’s going to be hard to convince folks that things like Mixer or xCloud have much of a chance of surviving scrutiny either,” he said.”

@ghostofgolden: SEGA would be yet another controversy on it's own when their audience is predominantly Nintendo (Sonic, Co-own Bayonetta with Nintendo) and Sony (Yakuza, Persona). Like Holy f***!

I posted a thread here a few years ago with Xbox rumours on it, and one of those rumours was that MS was considering to buy Sega. I guess that rumour was true.

I'm all for them buying Sega, but only if they were to bring back its old ip's, none of the crap like Yakuza & Persona that they pump out now.

@ghostofgolden: Kinda funny that Microsoft wanted to acquire Bungie for the exact same reasons as Sony.

@ghostofgolden: Booty will singlehandedly tank the Activision deal with his emails. lol

Sega would be kind of a useless vanity purchase. Yeah, the branding is cool and there's history between Xbox and Sega but I don't see the point of getting them really.

I do wonder, if the acquisition is blocked for good, what will their next move be. I have no Idea what other huge publishers have a big mobile presence.

I know it's red dragon but this appears to be the whole email:

@Zero_epyon: We dont need to source Red Dragon. Somehow the unredacted email leaked and it has been verified by multiple sources. This email was included in the other suit that was thrown out by the FTC cases judge. This means there are likely other unredacted emails floating around the web as well. Someone is trying to gauge how serious Xbox is with this acquisition. They’re ready to air out some dirty laundry

@Zero_epyon: umm how is this a bomb shell? It's been obvious for a long ass time that MS wanted to spend and spend even though it's a money pit. Thing like starfield day 1 gamepass, halo infinite, forza horizon 5, and the list goes on.

It’s not a “bombshell.” It just contradicts all the “we are in 3rd place and can’t compete” talk prior to the leak. And it specifically illustrates the Xbox strategy. Buy up the major publishers and push out the competition. Exactly what the FTC and federal government will want to avoid. Now, not only does Microsoft have to argue against PlayStations accusations of anti-competitive behavior, but now they have to fight against their own internal emails admitting to said behavior.

The email was already available to the judge in a redacted form. This version of the email leaked. Something seems fishy…

Did we know this already?

“Microsoft had cut the compute units on its Xbox Series X silicon down to 52 from 56 to improve production yield, but the company still missed a target for hardware production of the console. Microsoft also had a strategic bet on cloud that it appears to have been holding back chips for.”

They nerfed the Series X because of xCloud?!?! (and better production yields) That’s frustrating…

Is that lately or from the beginning?