Minecraft Wars! – Microsoft Reveals How Sony’s Tactics Thwarted Their Ambitions

The FTC vs Microsoft is spewing out a lot of industry secrets to the public. Both parties in this case are going back and forth since June 22 in court. The five-day case will be a crucial one for Microsoft Xbox as it will judge the validity of the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard deal. On day two of this case, Xbox CEO himself came forward to talk in court. And he dragged the rival company Sony for hindering the development of Minecraft.

Minecraft is certainly the cash cow of Microsoft. In 2021 alone, the game made the studio well over $380 million. Furthermore, since 2017, the game has been averaging over $400 million in yearly revenue. Naturally, the company wanted to expand the user base of this popular game. The PlayStation makers, however, threw roadblocks in the development of the game for PlayStation 5.

Xbox CEO says Sony delayed the development of Minecraft for PlayStation 5

During the proceeding of the FTC vs Microsoft case, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer offered testimony in court. The FTC inquired Spencer on a variety of topics, ranging from Nintendo Switch to Call of Duty. While talking about Minecraft, Spencer made a shocking revelation. “Sony was reluctant to ship us PlayStation dev kits. It put us behind on our development for Minecraft on PS5,” he said.

Due to Sony not providing the necessary dev kit in time, Minecraft is still not optimized for the latest console from PlayStation. “There is a version of Minecraft that runs on PS5,” said Spencer. However, the developers of the game released an unoptimized version of the game on PS5. The version running on PS5 is just the copy-pasted version from PlayStation 4.

Read More: Xbox CEO Phil Spencer Admits “Effectively” Failing to Compete With Its “Aggressive” Competitor Sony for the Past 20 Years

It was also stated that Xbox designers considered making Minecraft Dungeons an Xbox exclusive. This was revealed in an earlier conversation between Xbox CEO and Xbox CMO Mike Nichols. They both had reached an agreement about making the game exclusive to their platform.

However, the decision was changed in the end. Minecraft Dungeons is now available for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. What are your thoughts on the hassle between PlayStation and Xbox over Minecraft? Let us know in the comments section below.

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