Another day, another series of informational nuggets from the ongoing legal battle between Microsoft and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the former’s bid to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion USD.
Serving evidence in the the most recent round of proceedings was Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, who – among other things – was quizzed on his stance on platform exclusive games, telling the court that he’s not a believer in software being locked to a specific platform.
“I grew up in a company that always believed that software should run in as many platforms as possible, and that’s just the Microsoft I grew up in, I believe in that,” he said [via VGC].
Nadella was asked whether he was aware that despite his views, the Xbox platform currently plays host to a range of exclusive games. He responded by saying that it’s necessary for Xbox to compete with exclusive games because PlayStation has become the dominant player in the market using exclusives as a strategy, and reiterated a stance from the first day of court hearings where Microsoft copped to trailing behind in the console gaming “race.”
“If it was up to me, I would love to get rid of the entire, sort of, exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define, especially as a low share player in the console market that the dominant player there has defined market competition using exclusives and so, that’s the world we live in.”
“I have no love for that world.”
Nadella also hit back at suggestions that Microsoft sought to acquire Activision Blizzard with the intention of withholding Call of Duty from the PlayStation platform, saying, “I wanted to make it very, very clear to Yoshida-san, who is someone I have a fantastic relationship with, that there should be no ambiguity in our support for the Sony platform going forward, and that with Activision, our relationship in fact if anything should be, you know, this will help us reinforce our commitment to their platform.”
When asked if he’d commit to keeping the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation consoles, Nadella responded with “100 percent.”