Sony Won't Share PlayStation 6 With Activision if Microsoft Acquires It
Sony will not provide Activision Blizzard with the technical specs of the PlayStation 6 if the company is acquired by Microsoft, the company's CEO Jim Ryan has assured. Creating future installments of the Call of Duty series for the PS6 would therefore be severely hampered.
Documents from the April hearing of Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) have been made available for public review. The hearig was conducted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC for short) as part of its investigation into the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
Responding to questions from the U.S. regulator, Ryan stated what seems fairly obvious - that SIE will not release the technical specifications of the PlayStation 6 to AB if the company is in the hands of the Redmond giant.
"We simply could not risk a company owned by our direct competitor having access to this information," reads the document, sizable portions of which have been censored.
Source: Twitter / Stephen Totilo.
Ryan added that it would significantly impede the development of Activision Blizzard games for the PS6 - including future installments of the Call of Duty series, which turned out to be crucial in this matter.
However, this part of the Sony CEO's statement has been mostly removed from the public version of the document - we only see the expressed concern that Microsoft could have less incentive to develop PlayStation-specific game features (implied, for example, haptic vibrations or adaptive triggers).
To provide background for the situation at hand, let's add that, at the request of the FTC, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard were issued a "restraining order," meaning as much that the companies cannot temporarily finalize a merger. However, they hope that this decision will speed up the whole process.
The evidentiary hearing will take place today and tomorrow. On its eve, leaked documents show that one of the main goals of the Redmond giant's acquisition of AB is to eliminate Sony from the gaming market. You can read more about this in a separate separate news.
