As Microsoft moves toward a new deadline for its planned acquisition of Activision, the company has encountered an unexpected setback of its own.
A trove of documents came to light this week from Microsoft’s battle with the FTC, revealing corporate insights and trade secrets about its Xbox business that the company apparently intended to keep secret.
The files were part of a deposition that was added to an online portal hosted by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, but has since been taken offline.The document was originally uploaded on September 14th, but a gaming forum user Reset era We noted that unedited emails, reports, and presentations were attached to downloadable PDFs in batches of uploads. The files, which were apparently accidentally leaked by Microsoft itself, were taken offline earlier this week.
The leak provided an unexpected snapshot of Microsoft’s Xbox plans, including a timeline for a new version of the Xbox Series X. Xbox head Phil Spencer attempted to air the leak on X (formerly Twitter), characterizing the leaked information as outdated. But despite Spencer’s comments, there is still much to glean.
In one email in 2020, Spencer revealed Microsoft’s ambitions to acquire Nintendo, the third link in the PlayStation/Xbox ecosystem. “Nintendo is our greatest asset in the gaming industry,” Spencer wrote, adding that Microsoft would be the best-positioned potential buyer in the United States.
“At some point, joining Nintendo will be your career moment,” Spencer said. “It’s just going to take a long time for Nintendo to understand that there’s a future with its hardware.” Valve, the maker of the online gaming marketplace Steam, was named as such.
If Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has garnered so much attention, it’s hard to imagine how the company will fare with antitrust regulators if the pipe dream becomes a reality.
As far as the Xbox roadmap is concerned, a leak has revealed that Microsoft plans to release an updated version of the Xbox Series X next year. At the very least, it appears that this was planned around the time the leaked files were created. The refresh, codenamed “Brooklin,” will remove the disk drive and give the console a cylindrical design. Next year we could see a new version of his Xbox controller with lift-to-wake functionality and an accelerometer.
Leaks also have implications further down the roadmap. Although plans appear to be still in the early stages, Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox console could be a “hybrid gaming platform” that leverages cloud computing to offer new and possibly more advanced gaming experiences. There is. “Optimized for real-time gameplay and creators, it delivers new levels of performance beyond the capabilities of client hardware alone,” the company said in a leaked document.
Avid Console Wars viewers will notice a lot of other information floating around in the leak about Microsoft’s Xbox business. One last gem: Microsoft apparently had the hugely popular and well-reviewed Baldur’s Gate 3 in mind, but dismissed the game as a “second Stadia PC RPG” that wasn’t a priority for Xbox Game Pass. did. The irony, of course, is that Baldur’s Gate 3 elevates the Xbox exclusive Starfield, which before its release was considered a surefire hit overshadowed by other RPGs.
Microsoft’s major leaks (including potentially anti-competitive tweets) are unlikely to derail Activision’s acquisition plans, at least in the US. The company won its FTC case in July when a federal judge denied a regulatory injunction blocking the company’s proposed merger. With the win, the tech giant is set to move forward with a deal that will bring the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft developer under his wing for $69 billion.
The merger was originally scheduled to close on July 18 of this year, but due to uncertainty surrounding the merger, Microsoft and Activision pushed back the deadline to October 18 to resolve “remaining regulatory concerns.” . The deal has faced opposition from both US regulators and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.
