The email may well prove that Microsoft has this plan, I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft. It is in the established nature of Microsoft to behave in such anti-competitive ways, the shoe fits. But when the plantiff is using circumstantial evidence to deduce what the email must have contained, I think it's quite a stretch to say the email "proves" anything.
If someone at Microsoft had sent an email a month before the Activision deal saying, "we want to crush the next-gen Playstation," that could be evidence that the Activision deal is part of a plan to monopolize the market, but it could also simply be somewhat random nonsense puffery talk like when someone says "our graphics blow away the competition!" Given that it was sent back in 2019, the distance in time from the Activision deal makes it potentially less relevant.
The allegation is that the email is "uncontroverted evidence that Microsoft had the intention to put its main competition, the Sony PlayStation, out of the market." What I want to know is whether the email is a somewhat innocuous, "we want to relegate the PlayStation to the status of an also-ran while we become the premier gaming console" or something more serious like "our strategy to drive Sony out of the market is by buying up independent publishers and then making their games platform-exclusives to the Xbox." For the first one, I'm sure I could dredge up communications at any company that are similar. For the second, it shows a clear danger to competition and the market.
That seems like it would be pretty damning.
That's not what's happening. It's sealed to the public, not the lawyers.
The article even mentions this:
> The passage appears to be from Exhibit K, a sealed document that the gamers’ lawyers and Microsoft’s attorneys have been arguing over.
> In legal documents, Microsoft characterized the email as an “internal exchange” that should remain sealed; a Microsoft rep declined to comment further.
I'll see what the judge says, or if they decide to unseal this one.
Probably depends on the scope / kind of business. And maybe the kind of people running it?
E.g., my wife has no desire to grow her photography business (a sole proprietorship). She's content for it to be a source of income for however long she wants to keep doing it.
Sony on the other hand, has been trying to keep their platform closed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/03/14/playstatio...
>Sony's public rationale of being skeptical of crossplay was stated to be about the “risks” of exposing Sony players to non-PSN markets, but really, it seems to just have been about trying to throw its big sales lead around.
This is good enough reason to block the merger IMHO. I'm glad to see regulators taking a more active role.