According to some new information emerged in the lawsuit filed between the US FTC and Microsoft regarding the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, Phil Spencer allegedly made the “big decision” to acquire Activision Blizzard King. make all future ZeniMax/Bethesda games exclusive to Xbox At a meeting in November 2021, Microsoft’s official line on this as of today is “we will decide on a case-by-case basis”.
During the testimony of Xbox Chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart, the FTC drew attention to a conversation on Xbox. November 2021 conversation between Stuart and Matt Booty from Xbox. The two were discussing a recent monthly business review meeting between Xbox and ZeniMax where Spencer reportedly agreed to make all ZeniMax games private, not just new IPs. Stuart asked Booty what had happened during the meeting.
“All future games?” asked. “Not only new IPs, but also All future games? WowBooty confirmed this during the chat chat and said, “Phil [Spencer] He told them that all games will continue as Xbox exclusives.”
The two then discussed how pulling all Bethesda games from PlayStation would cause profit issues in the deal model between Microsoft and ZeniMax. “We’re going to have problems [di margine di responsabilità] In the Accord model, we will be removing a lot of PS units from the model,” Stuart said, which means: Expected profits from Xbox and ZeniMax After the acquisition, they accounted for the release of some Bethesda games on PlayStation before Spencer made that decision.
When Spencer testified last week, he said he didn’t fully remember this particular encounter.
Also, thanks to the trial, new Xbox sales figures have emerged for the first time in years, and half of the PS5 has been sold by the end of 2022.