In the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit alleging monopoly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that he was very willing to break away from the exclusive status of game content on the Xbox platform, but the actions of its competitor Sony forced Microsoft to compete with it in the game market in the form of exclusivity.
Satya Nadella emphasized that if he could decide for himself, he would like to get rid of the current situation where specific game content is exclusive to a single game console. At the same time, he accused competitor Sony of more often using console platform exclusivity to make specific games only playable on the PlayStation platform.
At the same time, Satya Nadella also expressed his hope to release games on as many gaming platforms as possible, which will not only allow more players to obtain better gaming content, but also benefit game creators, developers, etc.
When answering questions from Microsoft's lawyers, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan stated that the exclusive release of Starfield on the Xbox platform does not constitute a market monopoly, but believes that the Xbox Game Pass provided by Microsoft has seriously affected the profits of game developers and publishers. He emphasized that his company's continued investment in first-party game works and its assistance in releasing more game content through the PlayStation platform will benefit more game companies.
In addition, when the lawyer asked Jim Ryan whether he would make the "Call of Duty" series and other Activision Blizzard games exclusive to the Xbox or PC platform if he were in charge of the Xbox business, Jim Ryan asked this as a hypothetical question, emphasizing that he did not have enough ideas to answer this question, but believed that if Activision Blizzard game content was maintained on the PlayStation platform, there would be better development performance. At the same time, he also did not believe Microsoft's statement that releasing games on multiple platforms would bring the greatest benefits.
Currently, the game console market typically attracts player support through platform exclusivity. Therefore, both Microsoft and Sony retain their own first-party game works as platform exclusives. In addition, they also negotiate cooperation with various game companies, such as attracting players through one-year platform exclusivity or specific content exclusivity.
Therefore, even if Satya Nadella states that he is willing to release all games on different platforms, it is still difficult to say whether he is actually willing to allow Xbox and PC platform exclusive content such as "Halo" and "Forza" to be released on PlayStation or Nintendo Switch platforms.
