Microsoft and Activision CEOs battle to keep a giant Xbox deal alive

theverge.com:

Day four of FTC v. Microsoft was always going to be a big one. Most of the drama happened outside of court, but both Activision CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared on the witness stand in an attempt to save their $68.7 billion megadeal.

While I expected more of a grilling of both CEOs from the FTC and even Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, Bobby Kotick delivered some important testimony about Call of Duty on the Switch, and Satya Nadella tried to convince us that in his ideal world where everyone is happy, healthy, and wealthy, he’d love to end console exclusives if it wasn’t for pesky Sony.

It also wouldn’t be a day in this hearing without a Nintendo Switch debate — this time, Microsoft tried to argue it’s how gamers spent their time during the Switch launch that matters. Nvidia also appeared again briefly before Microsoft called Dennis Carlton, PhD, an economics expert who sounds like he’s paid $2,000 an hour to read Verge articles.

I’ll try not to make this summary 4,000 words like day three, so let’s get CEO to it.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was first to the stand in the morning, giving us a brief history lesson of how he bought Activision more than 30 years ago when it was insolvent and “lost its way.”

Activision manages to create a new Call of Duty game every year, something that Sony has argued makes it a particularly unique game. EA’s Medal of Honor inspired Call of Duty, admitted Kotick, after “people at Activision were playing it.” As Call of Duty is based on conflicts and war, there’s almost an endless supply of history to create yearly installments. “We had to instill a compensation and reward system to keep people motivated to work on sequels,” says Kotick.

So why isn’t such a huge and