Did Microsoft want to “put Sony out of business”? The corporation responded to the allegations

While Microsoft fights for Activision Blizzard in a US court and presents its arguments against the Federal Trade Commission's claims, a battle is underway on another front with a “group of gamers” who filed a lawsuit against the company last month.

As is known, these are lawyers seeking to harm Microsoft and secure substantial compensation. 

During the proceedings, “irrefutable evidence of Microsoft’s intention to drive its main competitor, Sony PlayStation, out of business” was uncovered — an email in which two company employees hinted at the topic of the PS5 manufacturer potentially exiting the market.

It turns out that the words of the head of Xbox Game Studios refer to the advantage Microsoft gained in the subscription market:

“A contrary view to the conventional wisdom might be that we (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business. If we believe that video games content matters in 10 years, we might look back and say: ‘Totally worth losing $2B or $3B in 2020 to avoid a situation where Tencent, Google, Amazon, or even Sony have become the Disney of games and own most of the valuable IP.’ For example, it is practically impossible for anyone to start a new video streaming service at scale at this point. What content do you base it on? Hulu and CBS All Access will end up being trivial players in that space. In games, Google is 3 to 4 years away from being able to have a studio up and running. Amazon has shown no ability to execute on game content. Content is the one moat we have, in terms of a catalog that then runs on current devices and capability to create new. Sony is really the only other player who could compete with Game Pass and we have a 2 year and 10 million subs lead. If we reverse course on day and date it is going to be hard to convince folks that things like Mixer or Xcloud have much of a chance to survive.”

The topic raised in the correspondence received widespread publicity: the media highlighted Microsoft’s desire to put Sony out of business, prompting the Xbox maker to issue a statement to The Verge. David Cuddy, Microsoft’s General Manager of Public Relations, said the email is three and a half years old, was sent before the attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard, and has no bearing on the matter at hand.