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

Microsoft needs to keep all its wits as the Federal Trade Commission is dragging the Xbox makers to court for a 5-day hearing session. Since Microsoft’s last year announcement of proposals to acquire Call of Duty developers Activision, Sony has been trying everything to stop this from going through. The PlayStation makers’ extensive bickering has prompted the FTC to put a restraining order on the merger plans. With so much negative clout around them, Microsoft is having to deal with a lot right now.

In a recent event from the ongoing Microsoft-Sony saga, the former has made some acknowledgements that would make many gamers surprised to the core.

Sony being aggressive for more than a year

The Microsoft-Activision merger proposition made Sony scutter with plans to stop the plan from fruition. Claiming that such an acquisition would damage PlayStation sales, Sony sought to make sure the Xbox makers did not have complete authority over the CoD devs. Sony alleged that the deal would lead to Microsoft restricting Activision titles to PlayStation users. It is worth noting here that the Xbox has always been third on the list of the highest-selling console manufacturers, following Sony and Nintendo since 2001, when the first Xbox was released.

On the other hand, Microsft has maintained that the deal would not hamper Sony’s market dominance as it claims. Furthermore, Microsoft also highlighted that there are multiple PS titles that are exclusively for PS, while Xbox hardly has something similar that is worth mentioning. As things continue to unfold for the community to witness, Phil Spencer, CEO of Xbox seems to accept their fate and hoist a white flag.

Xbox “effectively” pinned to the ground, suggests Xbox CEO

Citing Sony as an “aggressive competitor“, Spencer said Microsoft has been trailing behind for over two decades. Now as things look to go further south for them, Xbox looks to make a last-ditch attempt to make the Activision acquisition happen by bringing in Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to the courtroom on June 23.

Spencer also mentioned the technicalities of having the same titles on both the Xbox and the PlayStation. “Every time we ship a game on PlayStation… Sony captures 30 per cent of the revenue that we do on their platform and then they use that money among other revenue that they have to do things to try to reduce Xbox’s survival on the market”. He also added, “We try to compete, but as I said, over the last 20 years we’ve failed to do that effectively.”

Read more: FTC v. Microsoft: Call of Duty Publisher Allegedly Forced the Xbox Maker for a Bigger Revenue Share Deal!

With both sides having their say, fans wait eagerly to see if the acquisition actually happens or if Microsoft has to pay a break-up fee of $3 billion to Activision if the deal fails to materialize by July 18th.

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