The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Microsoft over its acquisition of Activision Blizard. The rason for the lawsuit is the FTC is worried that Microsoft has a record of acquiring companies to suppress competition from rival consoles. The FTC sued to block the $69bn deal, and the legal proceedings are currently underway.
As Microsoft gears up for the lawsuit, a judge has partially upheld a subpoena by Microsoft to view many of Sony’s internal documents, particularly ones regarding Sony’s exclusivity deals.
Microsoft now has access to many of Sony’s behind-the-scenes dealings when securing exclusivity deals, marketing partnerships, and more.
Microsoft hopes that this information will allow them to highlight the exact clauses and limitations that Sony puts on their business partners.
Not everything that Microsoft subpoenaed was released, however, with the judge’s ruling restricting some of Sony’s documents.
“SIE’s Motion [to quash the subpoena] is granted in part and denied in part.”
While Sony won’t have to disclose executive performance reviews they will have to share “the nature and extent of SIE’s content licensing agreements are relevant to… allegations of exclusivity arrangements between video game console developers and video game developers and publishers.”
The files shared are only from 2019 onwards.
What has apparently been revealed with this subpoena was the massive advantage that PlayStation currently holds over Xbox in market share. Microsoft hopes to use this to show that Sony’s exclusivity deals work to keep games off Xbox Game Pass.