Microsoft had intended to “spend Sony out of business”, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty wrote in an email dated from …
Microsoft had intended to “spend Sony out of business”, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty wrote in an email dated from 2019.
The email, sent to Xbox exec Tim Stuart, has publicly surfaced now during Microsoft’s ongoing courtroom battle with the US Federal Trade Commission over its proposed $68.7bn Activision Blizzard buyout. In it, Booty encourages Xbox to make further acquisitions to bolster Game Pass and compete with Sony.
“We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business,” Booty wrote, in reference to planned spending of spending $2-3bn in 2020 to avoid competitors getting ahead.
Booty went on to summarise the competition and state the need to avoid a “situation where Tencent, Google, Amazon or even Sony have become the Disney of games and own most of the valuable content”.
