The FTC’s (the US Federal Trade Commission) temporary restraining order case has led Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King’s management to appear in court to hold back the Redmond-based company from gobbling up the publisher for $68.7 billion.

In August, Microsoft will be in court over the antitrust lawsuit FTC filed last year, but until then, this case has yet to be settled. Phil Spencer swore to the judge that he has no secret plans: “I think as we’ve seen even in preparation for this, that gamers are an active and vocal group. In my view, us pulling Call of Duty from PlayStation would create irreparable harm for the Xbox brand. I would raise my hand. I will do whatever it takes. We have no plan. I’m committing that we will not pull Call of Duty – it is my testimony – from PlayStation. As you said, Sony has to allow us to ship the game on their platform, but absent any of that, my commitment is, and my testimony is, that we will continue to ship future versions of Call of Duty on Sony’s PlayStation 5.”

Besides that, he said PlayStation 5 (no PlayStation 6? that console will be out in ten years; the judge asked him about it, and Spencer confirmed PS6 and other consoles), and Spencer’s statement puts his freedom at risk. If Microsoft does otherwise, the Xbox boss will be prosecuted for perjury. He also said that Starfield was the main reason Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media, Bethesda’s parent company and that the Xbox exclusivity of The Elder Scrolls VI is not yet set in stone: “I think we’ve been a little unclear on what platforms The Elder Scrolls VI launching on, given how far out the game is. It’s difficult for us right now to nail down… It’s so far out that it’s hard to understand what the platforms will even be. When we acquired ZeniMax, one impetus for that was that Sony had done a deal for Deathloop and Ghostwire… to pay Bethesda not to ship those games on Xbox. So, the discussion about Starfield when we heard that Starfield was potentially also going to end up skipping Xbox, we can’t be in a position as a third-place console where we fall further behind on our content ownership, so we’ve had to secure content to remain viable in the business.”

According to Bethesda’s head of marketing and communications, Pete Hines, if Starfield had been released for PlayStation 5, the game would not have been released in September (it will launch on September 6 for Xbox Series, PC, and Game Pass; but the Premium and Constellation Editions of the game will be available to play from September 1) because more quality assurance testing would have been required. Sarah Bond, Microsoft’s vice-president of corporate affairs, said that Activision Blizzard King CEO Bobby Kotick would not bring Call of Duty to Xbox unless the 70/30% revenue share was pushed up to 80/20% in favor of the publisher: “If we did not move beyond standard revenue share that he [Bobby Kotick] intended not to place Call of Duty on Xbox. It was clear that Call of Duty would be on PlayStation 5, which would not have been good if it was not also on Xbox if it was launching simultaneously. Time was limited [regarding a new CoD revenue deal]. We had players whose expectations we wanted to meet, so we ultimately decided it was the best thing for the business.”

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Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech, WCCFTech, WCCFTech