Xbox Game Studios considered investing about 3,000 million euros to leave Sony out of the video game business

June 27 (Portaltic/EP) –

The division of Microsoft Xbox Studios proposed to invest between 2,000 and 3,000 million dollars (between 1,800 and 2,700 million euros at the current exchange rate) to leave its main competitor, Sony, “out of the business” of video games.

It was specifically the head of Xbox Game Studios, Matt Booty, who encouraged Xbox CFO Tim Stuart to pay that amount. to fight against the Japanese company in the field of subscription servicesas has been advanced The Verge.

This is revealed by an internal email dated December 2019 that has been presented in Microsoft’s evidentiary hearing before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the national consumer protection and anticompetitive practices agency of the United States, which a few weeks ago filed a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard.

The FTC, for its part, has presented a document that would demonstrate Microsoft’s interest in monopolizing the video game business at the expense of the PlayStation manufacturer. In it, Matt Booty encouraged Tim Stuart to shell out big bucks “to put Sony out of business” because Microsoft was “in a unique position”.

In this email, the head of Xbox Game Studios referenced spending between $2 billion and $3 billion in 2020, to get ahead of its competitor. Other firms present at this writing are Google, which was “three or four years away from being able to have a studio up and running”; and Amazon, which had not shown “ability to play video games”, according to Booty.

For its part, Microsoft has argued that it is an old email – against the agreement of Activision Blizzard acquisitionwhich was announced in January of last year-, which would prove that it is unrelated to its intention to acquire the developer and that the strategy proposed by Booty was not followed.

MICROSOFT ALSO CONSIDERED BUYING SEGA AND BUNGIE

This has not been the only internal communication from Microsoft to which The Verge has had access, since this medium has also announced that the company was looking to acquire the developers video game Sega and Bungie.

That’s what the CEO of Gaming at Microsoft, Phil Spencer, expressed to Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, and the company’s CFO, Amy Hood, in an email in which he requested the approval of a strategy to grow in his subscription service.

“We believe Sega has created a well-balanced portfolio of games across all segments with global geographic appeal and will help us accelerate Xbox Game Pass both on and off the console,” Spencer said in this proposal.

Along with Sega, Microsoft would also have considered staying with Bungie, which is now owned by Sony, as well as IO Interactive, which would also be included, and other developers such as Supergiant Games, Thunderful, Niantic or Zynga, focused on mobile devices.

In this sense, it should be remembered that in recent months the company has closed agreements for a duration of 10 years with different video game platforms in the cloud, among which are Ubitus, Nintendo, Nvidia, Boosteroid and more recently Nware.

Microsoft has until July 18 to formalize the purchase of the Call Of Duty developer. If this date is passed without receiving FTC approval, both companies will see each other in the obligation to renegotiate the purchase agreement.