The video game console war between Microsoft and Sony took an interesting turn on Tuesday as comments surfaced of an Xbox exec saying Microsoft could “spend Sony out of business.”
“We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business,” said Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, in an email that’s been made public as part of the FTC v. Microsoft hearing.
“If we think that video game content matters in 10 years, we might look back and say, ‘Totally would have been worth it to lose $2B or $3B in 2020 to avoid a situation where Tencent, Google, Amazon or even Sony have become the Disney of games and own most of the valuable content,’” he continued.
To bolster his argument, he pointed to the streaming world, saying it’s “practically impossible” to kick off an at-scale streaming service “at this point” (the email is from December 2019). He called Hulu and CBS All Access trivial as part of his example.
He then circled back to games, noting that Google is “three to four years away from being able to have a studio up and running.” Given that the email’s from 2019, that would mean enough time has elapsed for such a thing to come to pass, despite public chatter around Google’s gaming efforts being mum following the death of Google Stadia.
Booty also addressed potential concerns around Amazon which has, over the years, made a concerted effort to break into gaming in a meaningful way. “Amazon has shown no ability to execute on game content,” Booty said. Since 2019, things have changed, and Amazon does have a few high-profile releases under its belt (“New World” and “Lost Ark,” for example), but it’s still far from being anywhere near the Disney example Booty brought up.
Booty wrapped up his email by saying Sony was the only real potential Xbox Game Pass competitor in the space and that, as far as subscription-model gaming went, as of 2019, Game Pass had a 10 million subscriber lead over whatever competition Sony could muster.
“If we reverse course on day and date, it’s going to be hard to convince folks that things like Mixer or Xcloud have much of a chance of surviving scrutiny either,” said Booty, concluding his email. This final sentence appears to be in response to the entirely redacted content of previous emails sent by folks such as CEO of Microsoft gaming Phil Spencer and Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood.
As to what Booty was referring to with that last sentence, it’s somewhat unclear, but “day and date” may be a reference to Xbox’s policy that all Microsoft games will launch day one on Game Pass. Said policy has been in place publicly since January 2018.
