Microsoft’s FTC fight comes down to Call of Duty

theverge.com:

The final day of FTC v. Microsoft gave us key closing arguments from both parties and a chance to reflect on this giant hearing. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley took the opportunity to reflect, too: would she even be sitting here, she mused, if Sony had signed a Call of Duty deal with Microsoft?

That’s a good point, and it was part of a series of tough questions Judge Corley had for the FTC. The grilling centered on why consumers would be harmed if Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard and particularly on how many PlayStation players would switch to Xbox if Activision’s key game actually disappeared. The FTC has relied largely on Sony, the market leader in consoles, to back up its theory of harm to competition if Microsoft were to make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox or sabotage the PlayStation version. It’s a theory that has already been rejected by most regulators worldwide, including the European Commission and even the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK.

Despite this, the FTC has focused most of its case on Call of Duty and Xbox console exclusivity instead of exploring the cloud competition concerns that both the European Commission and CMA took issue with — the former approving the deal only after securing a remedy from Microsoft about cloud concerns, the latter blocking it entirely over them.

That gave the agency a difficult case to prove, and in the dispute’s final hours, the cracks really began to show.

Before the closing arguments, there was one last journey into the Xbox financial weeds. Xbox CFO Tim Stuart faced a grilling over the models involved in acquisitions for both Bethesda and Activision Blizzard. We heard about emails and documents painting a picture of how Microsoft could withhold