For the CEO of Microsoft, exclusive video games should not exist, neither his own nor those of his competitors. This is how clear Satya Nadella has expressed himself during the trial that has faced the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States against Microsoft, and that must determine if the latter has the green light to take over Activision Blizzard for 68,700 million dollars. The verdict will be announced this week.
“If it were up to me, I would love to get rid of all console exclusives, but that is not for me to define, especially as a player with low market share in the console sector,” said Microsoft CEO, in statements collected by the specialized media The Verge, during his statement at the trial held in San Francisco between June 22 and 29.
“The dominant player in this sector [Sony] has defined market competition using exclusives, so that’s the world we live in; and I have no sympathy for him, ”Nadella added during the trial that tries to determine whether the purchase of the American giant Activision Blizzard would provide an anticompetitive advantage for Microsoft and its Xbox video game division.
That the CEO of Microsoft indirectly attributes to Sony the role of “dominant player” in the console market is in line with the statements of the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, who during his hearing a few days earlier also stated that “Xbox has lost The console wars and their rivals are positioned to continue to dominate, even taking advantage of exclusive content.
The argument of weakness of the Xbox brand against PlayStation is based on the sales of both consoles (21 million Xbox Series compared to almost 40 for PS5) and it was also the one used by the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, during his visit to the European Commission last February, when a delegation of Microsoft executives traveled to Brussels to try to convince the European organization of the benefits of the purchase of Activision Blizzard, the publisher of titles as popular as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft or Candy Crush. The European Commission ended up approving the purchase, but the antitrust agencies of the United States, the aforementioned FTC, and the United Kingdom, the CMA, have yet to give their approval.
Nadella’s latest statements, in which he has defended that in his ideal world there would be no exclusive games, came a day after the head of PlayStation, Jim Ryan, testified at the hearing to admit that exclusives like Starfield, the Microsoft’s most anticipated game and that will be exclusive to Xbox on consoles, are anti-competitive.
Exclusive video games have always been one of the biggest headaches in the video game industry, both for the companies themselves that try to get hold of them to enrich the value of their console, and for consumers who must purchase several machines if they want to. access all available titles.
This week the position of the US federal court in charge of approving or not the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft will be announced. In case of giving the green light to the operation, Microsoft would only need to convince the UK competition regulator (the Competition and Markets Authority or CMA in English) to have all the necessary support to carry out this purchase, the largest in the history of entertainment, without having to remodel its lines of business with the Anglo-Saxon country.
