Nintendo Wants Nothing To Do With The FTC’s Lawsuit Vs The Microsoft-Activision Deal

gameranx.com:

Nintendo of America is making moves to excuse themselves out of being involved in the FTC’s lawsuit to block the Microsoft-Activision deal.

Florian Mueller shares this update in the course of following this case:

“#Nintendo of America’s Senior VP for Publisher and Developer Relations, Steve Singer, has filed a motion to quash the #FTC’s subpoena.

He’s “responsible for NOA’s relationships with third-party game publishers and developers such as #Microsoft and #Activision.”

Initially the #FTC wanted to find out about #Nintendo’s potential concerns about #Microsoft-#ActivisionBlizzard. Apparently the focus then shifted to Nintendo’s 10-year deal with Microsoft. Suggests to me the FTC is worried about how those contracts weaken its “case”.”

Nintendo’s motion to quash isn’t going to stop FTC’s lawsuit vs the deal. Instead, Nintendo’s actions, via their representative Steve Singer, is intended to get themselves out of getting involved in the lawsuit at all.

While Nintendo is a major player in the console space, and a part of the video game console market if you don’t limit your definition to high-end consoles, it’s not really directly involved in the Microsoft-Activision deal. And by that, I mean, of course, that Nintendo is neither owned or an owner of Microsoft or Activision Blizzard King.

FTC’s hopes to get Nintendo involved further would put the company in an unusual bind. On one end, most gamers see Nintendo and Microsoft as competitors. Of course, on another level, Nintendo and Microsoft have done business plenty of times. Most recently, they did come together to make the recent, seemingly impossible, rerelease of GoldenEye 007 on their respective platforms happen.

Many people take this for granted, but Microsoft