Xbox' back catalogue isn't just a stopgap – it's a competitive advantage | Opinion
One peculiar aspect of Microsoft's battle to stave off regulatory intervention in its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard – now seemingly in its final stretch, following the slapping down of the FTC's frankly ill-conceived case for blocking the deal – is that it has required the second largest company ever to exist, a $2.7 trillion dollar behemoth that rakes in profits of over $80 billion every year, to convincingly play an underdog role.
To that end, Microsoft has done something platform holders almost never do, effectively talking down its competitive position versus rivals like Sony, and highlighting the ongoing gulf in the performance of the Xbox compared to the PlayStation.
It's not that this is anything we didn't really know before – although it's generally been de rigueur to at least pay lip-service to the notion that these platforms are equal competitors, however unrealistic that may have been at any point other than the Xbox' golden few years at the outset of the PS3/360 generation – it's just been an odd reversal to see it come directly from Microsoft itself.
While it is obviously a strategic move for Microsoft to make these claims – it wants to pay a nosebleed-inducing amount of money for Activision Blizzard, and needs to convince regulators that it won't massively distort the competitive landscape by doing so – it's also the case that the claims themselves are accurate.
Xbox is very much an underdog in the console landscape right now (the game subscription service landscape is a different story, as the UK's CMA noticed, but that won't be enough of a sticking point to prevent the deal from going through in the end), not only in terms of hardware sales but also in terms of its catalogue of IPs and
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