FTC v. Microsoft: all the news from the big Xbox courtroom battle
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We’re on a 45-minute break so hearing participants can finish their quests and dungeons... I mean lunch. Let’s recap what we’ve heard from Bethesda’s Pete Hines and Xbox’s Sarah Bond.
Hines started off by self dunking on Redfall, admitting there “might be some differences of opinion” on whether it meets the triple-A standard. It wasn’t an intentional diss of Redfall, but given how disappointing the game was it might as well have been.
The FTC’s counsel then led Hines down the garden path towards the pit where Starfield on PS5 is buried. Hines was reminded of his apologies to PS5 players who won’t be able to play Starfield on their consoles. “I don’t like it when our players are upset over something we do,” said Hines. The FTC argues game exclusivity is an anti-competitive move, but Hines made the opposite case that it allows developers to streamline a game. “We would not be putting this game out in nine weeks if we were supporting an entire additional platform, in my opinion.”
Questioning then moved on to other Bethesda exclusive games and Hines revealed the upcoming Indiana Jones game is exclusive to Xbox and PC. The game was originally announced in 2021, just months before Microsoft finalized its $7.5 billion deal to acquire Bethesda. There was a contract in place with Disney to ship Indiana Jones on multiple consoles, but the game was made Xbox exclusive after Microsoft’s acquisition. The FTC argues that this behavior could carry across to Activision Blizzard games if Microsoft was to close its $68.7 billion proposed acquisition.
Sarah Bond, head of Xbox creator experience, was next to testify. There was a fun exchange around Diablo. Bond explained the franchise to Judge Corley and noted it’s “literally my father’s favorite game.”
Judge Corley then asked Bond about Xbox Game Pass and we got some details about how the program started and how it can generate interest in subscribers buying up games they haven’t played before.
Bond also touched briefly on Xbox Cloud Gaming. The FTC argues cloud gaming is a separate market, but Bond claims it’s just a feature right now. Honest.
“We believe there is going to be 2 billion gamers in the world, and our goal is to reach every one of them,” was the message from Kareem Choudhry, head of cloud gaming at Microsoft, when the company first stared talking about xCloud in 2018.
