Microsoft’s Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, compared the Xbox business to Polaroid and its struggles to adapt to digital photography. In a 2019 email Spencer said it was important to have a mobile gaming strategy:
First, we are exactly like Polaroid. We are core gaming which isn’t growing it’s TAM (analogous to film photographers) while mobile gaming MAU is growing WW at a significant rate (like digital photography was growing).
We have the list of witnesses that will testify tomorrow, starting at 8:30AM PT / 11:30AM ET:
• Jim Ryan, Sony (video deposition)
• Jeff Fisher, Nvidia (video deposition)
• Phil Eisler, Nvidia (video deposition)
• Dr. Robin Lee, FTC economic expert
• Dr. Elizabeth Bailey, MS economic expert
• Lori Wright, Xbox (joint stipulation)
Lots of video testimony here and most of it will have been filmed months ago. Stay tuned for all the latest news in the morning.
Emergency services in the UK are experiencing issues today. 999 calls across many parts of the UK aren’t connecting due to a “technical fault.” The outage is affecting London Ambulance Service, Essex Fire Service, West Midlands Police, and many other services. The Metropolitan Police is recommending that the public call 101 in an emergency until further notice.
FTC v. Microsoft day two was all about console wars and whether Xbox is really in a distant third place.
It has been a long day of questioning and we even ran over the allocated time to squeeze in witness testimony from former Google Stadia product lead Dov Zimring.
If you’re interested in what Xbox chief Phil Spencer had to say earlier please check out our first recap of his testimony, followed by our second recap after the lunch break.
The hearing will resume on Tuesday at 8:30AM PT / 11:30AM ET so check back here for all the latest news. Thanks for tuning in, and have a great weekend!
It feels like Judge Corley grew tired of the FTC’s questioning of Phil Spencer earlier. Judge Corley cut in when the FTC was asking if Spencer could legally bind Microsoft into keeping Diablo on PlayStation. A Microsoft lawyer objected and Judge Corley said “your point has been made, move along.”
Then later Judge Corley directly cut off the FTC’s questioning of Spencer after the regulator’s lawyer asked if Spencer could make a Call of Duty commitment for bringing the game to a Sony PlayStation cloud service.
“I don’t think that’s it, I’m going to cut off the questioning there,” said Judge Corley.
There was an audible “ooof” from a few members of the audience watching on, MLex reporter Michael Acton, who is in the courtroom, says.
