Xbox FTC Trial Day 1: The FTC Went on the Attack Against Bethesda. How Will Microsoft Respond?

ign.com:

A few months ago, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority hinged its block of the Microsoft-Activision merger on cloud gaming, momentarily seeming to put to bed worries that Call of Duty exclusivity might kill the deal.

But as the FTC met Microsoft in a US court today over a potential pause on the impending acquisition, all the Call of Duty fears have been dredged right back up again. And it's partially thanks to the no-longer-secret inner workings of a previous deal: Xbox's 2021 acquisition of Zenimax.

The FTC had already dropped several hints that it was preparing to make an example of Zenimax, most notably in a recent filing calling the merger "powerful evidence" against the much larger absorption of Activision. But its precise arguments around this weren't laid bare until today, when FTC counsel brought up Bethesda head of global publishing Pete Hines to answer questions about the earlier merger.

Hines was only on the witness stand for an hour, positioned between witness for the prosecution Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty and defense witness Xbox corporate vice president Sarah Bond. The primary thrust of the FTC's argument, consistent in both its filing and its examination of Hines, was that Zenimax released games across multiple platforms including PlayStation before it was acquired by Xbox. Now, under Xbox, it does not do so, and the same thing will inevitably happen if Xbox gets ahold of Activision.

Prior to Hines' testimony, one element of setup from the FTC involved speaking to Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty about, among other things, game exclusivity. After Xbox lawyers introduced a piece of evidence showing that games including Ghostwire: Tokyo, Outer Worlds, and Minecraft: Legends had come to non-Xbox