The attorneys handling the gamers' lawsuit againstMicrosoftfor the Activision Blizzard acquisition claim to have “uncontroverted evidence” that the deal is intended to put PlayStation out of business. This was brought to light in the latest phase of the antitrust suit that was originally filed against Microsoft in December 2022.
In March 2023, thegamers’ lawsuit against Microsoftwas dismissed by a judge who said that the complaint did not sufficiently establish that the Activision Blizzard deal would result in “anticompetitive effects in any relevant market.” The lawyers in that case have now appealed, this time pointing to an internal Microsoft email that they claim proves the company intends to push PlayStation out of the market with the acquisition.
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The new court documents, which were filed on June 9, state thatMicrosoft’s Head of Xbox Game Studios (Matt Booty) sent an internal email to Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer of Xbox (Tim Stuart) that provides “uncontroverted evidence” of the company’s anti-PlayStation intentions. Unfortunately, the contents of the email have been redacted because Microsoft’s attorneys insist the internal correspondence should remain confidential. However, it turns out that the contentious email may not in fact prove anything in regards to the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
In an interaction with Axios, a Microsoft representative clarified that the email in question was sent by Matt Booty in 2019. In other words, it predatesMicrosoft’s January 2022 announcement of the Activision Blizzard dealby up to three years. So even if one of the Xbox company’s long-term goals is to eliminate PlayStation from the video gaming space, this specific email probably couldn’t prove that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard is part of that strategy.
It’s uncertain at this point if the specifics of the email will ever be made public, if Microsoft’s attorneys have their way. It’s also unclear how the lawyers in the gamers’ lawsuit got a hold of it or why they didn’t consider the send date to be relevant to their argument. It is Exhibit K in the case, which means that there have undoubtedly been other pieces of evidence submitted to support their claim that theABK deal could harm consumers on antitrust grounds.
In the meantime, the pending deal is also facing another recent roadblock, asNew Zealand has cited concerns about the Activision Blizzard acquisitionand announced that it will postpone its final decision to July 17. Similarly to the UK’s CMA ruling, New Zealand’s Commerce Commission seems particularly hesitant about the impact the deal could have on the cloud gaming front.
