According to some new information that has emerged through the lawsuit between the US FTC and Microsoft over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, Phil Spencer allegedly made the “big decision” to make all future ZeniMax/Bethesda games Xbox exclusives in a November 2021 meeting. As of today, Microsoft’s official line on this is “we will decide on a case-by-case basis.”
During testimony from Tim Stuart, Chief Financial Officer of Xbox, the FTC drew attention to a conversation in November 2021 chat between Xbox’s Stuart and Matt Booty. The two were discussing a recent monthly business review meeting between Xbox and ZeniMax, where Spencer reportedly agreed to make all ZeniMax games exclusive going forward, not just the new IPs. Stuart asked Booty what happened during the meeting.
“All games in the future?” Stuart asked. “Not just new IPs, but all games in the future? WowBooty confirmed this during the chat conversation, writing, “Phil [Spencer] told them that all titles will continue exclusively for Xbox.”
Starfield
The two then discussed how pulling all Bethesda titles from PlayStation would cause profit issues in the deal model between Microsoft and ZeniMax. “We will have problems [di margine di responsabilità] in the Accord model, as we will be eliminating a huge number of PS units from the model,” Stuart noted. This means that expected profits from Xbox and ZeniMax after the acquisition they accounted for the publication of some Bethesda games on PlayStation, before Spencer made this decision.
When Spencer testified last week, he said he had no precise recollection of this specific encounter.
Also through the trial, new Xbox sales figures popped up for the first time in years, selling half of the PS5 by the end of 2022