Microsoft Fires Back Hard At FTC Lawsuit To Block Its Activision Deal
The FTC's lawsuit alleges that the purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King by Microsoft would harm competition in the market and lead to less choice for gamers. Microsoft's rebuttal is primarily to point out that it's not only a fairly distant third-place player in the console market behind second-place Sony and market leader Nintendo, but also that it has essentially no presence in the mobile market.
Source: Microsoft (click to enlarge)
The document says that Microsoft's ATVI purchase is intended to "meet the billions of gamers ... on mobile devices" and to "learn how to make games that appeal to and engage them." It's an interesting tack—we're buying one of the world's largest game publishers, known for its AAA properties, to improve our mobile game catalog—especially in light of the fact that, as Microsoft points out itself, Activision-Blizzard-King only controls some 4% of the global mobile gaming market (by revenues).
Microsoft's filing also mentions that it actually expects the deal to make Activision's games "more broadly available" by expanding to additional platforms, "like Nintendo." It does make a certain sort of sense that Microsoft's technical expertise could help Activision bring its properties to more platforms, but to see it stated as a goal by Microsoft is pretty curious.
Microsoft isn't exactly a small indie publisher, though. The biggest properties it owns these days were acquired as part of its Zenimax purchase, and the hotly-anticipated titles Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI will be exclusive to Xbox and Windows PCs, as previously-announced.