Microsoft was ready to ‘go spend Sony out of business’ to strengthen Xbox

theverge.com:

By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.

Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios chief, Matt Booty, was encouraging Xbox CFO Tim Stuart to spend big money on acquiring game content in 2019 to set the company up to battle Sony in subscriptions. The revelation comes in an email thread that’s part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing.

“We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business,” said Booty, referencing spending $2 billion or $3 billion in 2020 to avoid competitors getting ahead in content at a later date.

“It is practically impossible for anyone to start a new video streaming service at scale at this point,” said Booty, referencing competitors like Google, Amazon, and Sony. Booty described content as a moat and that only Sony could really compete with Game Pass:

In games, Google is 3 to 4 years away from being able to have a studio up and running. Amazon has shown no ability to execute on game content. Content is the one moat that we have, in terms of a catalog that runs on current devices and capability to create new. Sony is really the only other player who could compete with Game Pass and we have a 2 year and 10 million subs lead.

The email is part of a thread discussing Xbox Game Pass, with the rest of the chain redacted. But it looks like Microsoft was considering reversing the idea of day and date releases of its own games on Xbox Game Pass in 2019 — something Booty wasn’t happy about. “If we reverse course on day and date, it’s going to be hard to convince folks that things like Mixer or xCloud have much of a chance of surviving scrutiny either,” he said.