FTC v. Microsoft: all the news from the big Xbox courtroom battle
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Judge Corley moves on to subscriptions and the cloud.
“The next big thing is multi-game subscriptions and then cloud,” says FTC’s lawyer, before acknowledging subscriptions are more developed at this point:
We’ve seen from Microsoft documents and their emphasis on cloud and subscriptions. Game Pass is a strategic driver for Microsoft’s gaming business. The effect of this transaction to turbo charge Game Pass... leave Google, Amazon ‘in the dust’ and build the content moat around Game Pass is in the record and compelling. There is a concern that you take this content and use it to advance your own platform and the consumer is harmed.
FTC argues the harm is “we end up in a world where instead of having content available, it’s all just Game Pass and maybe Sony has PlayStation Plus and those two suck up all the content and that’s it.”
This is a much stronger argument from the FTC than the console theory of harm and exclusivity. It’s clear Microsoft isn’t buying Activision Blizzard just for console, it’s about Xbox Game Pass and the future of that service in the cloud, mobile, and elsewhere.
