Activision-Blizzard lawsuit turns the tide in favor of Microsoft

The FTC’s administrative law judge is pressuring Sony Interactive Entertaninment (SIE) to turn over sensitive documents that could affect the court proceedings for the Activision-Blizzard lawsuit. The company, which had previously told that it would turn over the documents, asked for additional time to collect and organize the documents, but failed to deliver them within the expected deadline.

Sony likely to lose in Activision-Blizzard lawsuit

According to Sony’s defense, there is not enough time to collect the requested documents. The company also says that collecting them all would impose a financial burden of $2 million on the company.

Previously, it was required to provide the court with data dating back to 2012, including many metrics and performance figures, as well as contractual agreements with third-party broadcasters. However, at Sony’s request, the judge agreed to make this information available from 2019 onwards.

While the Activision-Blizzard lawsuit is quite complicated (at least in our legal knowledge, it is not possible to interpret it completely correctly) the judge’s rejection of many of SIE’s requests suggests that the outcome of the company’s counterclaim is not going well.

Sony is also required to provide information about its exclusivity agreements with third-party publishers. While we don’t have access to this information, it is likely that Microsoft will use Sony’s lucrative PlayStation exclusivity agreements against SIE in the lawsuit.

Which brings us to this point, of course: Sony’s “Call of Duty games being Xbox exclusives” argument is actually at odds with the “PS Exclusives” logic that the company has previously used. This leads us to another conclusion, which is that this lawsuit is behind Sony’s decision to bring exclusive games to PC.