Nintendo ordered to testify before FTC in Microsoft-Activision Merger case

FTC law judge orders Nintendo executive who negotiated the 10-year Call of Duty deal with Microsoft to testify in FTC's Activision merger lawsuit.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

This is just gets spicy.

[Mr_cheese]

The FTC won't let me be or let me be me, so let me see

[Newmanator]

They tried to shut me down on N4G but it’d be so empty, without me

[Mr_cheese]

At least someone got it hahaha

[SullysCigar]

Nintendo really didn't want to be involved, but it looks like that premature COD deal they signed is dragging them in regardless.

[--Onilink--]

Well of course they dont want to be involved in a trial where they might be asked about specifics of their next console which is undoubtedly part of the 10 year deal they signed. No company would when it might cause information to come out that they dont want the public to know about yet

[S2Killinit]

And the specifics of what was actually promised by MS. Can you imagine what may have been said in the negotiations? We are going to have to wait and see now.

[SullysCigar]

If you wanna dance with the Devil, you gotta play his way.

[Tacoboto]

"I plead the Gamescom 2023"

[__SteakDeck__]

@S2Killinit I know you said in another article that you think the deal will still go through with concessions. But the question is what will MS agree to? The CMA may ask MS to remove COD from the acquisition, but there’s no way MS is going to do that.

[mastershredder]

Tee hee. Slimey Slime. MS has really done nothing but poison and toxify the industry ever since they entered console gaming. I miss the days when the industry was not so lopsided and did not have all this drama tied to it.

[darthv72]

Even back in the old days, the drama was there. We just didn't have a 24h instant news cycle that we do now. you had to wait 30 days to get the latest scoop / dirt on any gaming news. And then it was all down to how it was being framed for the reader through the publication. They didnt want to burn any bridges because of advertising $$. Now a days, everyone is a newsie.

[shinoff2183]

Spot on Darth. Remember the sega and Nintendo beef.

[S2Killinit]

Of course nothing like this merger and acquisition has ever happened in the gaming industry but otherwise yes.

[CrimsonWing69]

The hell are you talking about? Have you looked at Nintendo's business practices during the NES era?

Or are you just jumping on the Microsoft hate bandwagon? Are you going to boycott COD because Activision Blizzard pushed and even approached Microsoft to do this buyout?

If Sony did this would you be calling them "poison" and "toxic" to the industry? Is purposefully paying to keep a game off the competitor's console "toxic"?

This is business. I don't fault Sony for their tactics and I don't blame Microsoft for wanting this deal. It's not about football teams here. Don't treat it from a fanboy perspective and besides, cut-throat competition is good for the consumers. We get more games that try to outdo each other.

[shinoff2183]

Crimson are you one of the people who flat out deny that xbox has third party exclusives also. They all do it.

[CrimsonWing69]

@shinoff2183

Where did I deny that or even implicated that they don’t?

My point was to exemplify that if you claim one side as “toxic” then you absolutely cannot say the other isn’t “poisonous” to the industry and my other point was not to take a fanboy approach to what is essentially business.

Does that make sense? Or are you one of you those people that tries to rationalize one “bad deed” to justify another’s?

Know what I mean, Vern?

[dumahim]

Poison the industry or the fanbase? It seemed pretty murky back then too. Especially the whole Nintendo Playstation fiasco.

[neomahi]

Eh, but it did. Nintendo staged it for SEGA to wind up in front of Senator Liberman running for Senator that year, that went over well. Afterwards Nintendo's Howard Lincoln wrote SEGA: "Roses are red, violets are blue, so you had a bad day, boo hoo hoo." This was over Mortal Kombat and violent video games. This is business, man. Business and politics play by the same rules.

If Microsoft had any pride or integrity and respect for the industry, the Major League Baseball deal would've never happened. Phil Spencer would've turned that down and said they don't play that way. Not only did Phil Spencer accept a game developed by a PlayStation Studio and didn't front the bill or help pay for any development of the game, but they gave PlayStation's game away for free to push their own agenda. It wasn't theirs to give away. MLB doesn't know anything about the game industry, but Microsoft and Xbox were so desperate for a quality game from a gaming titan, they accepted that quick, instead of turning it down with any form of honor so, Xbox had this coming.

Xbox could've gone to PlayStation and said: "Hey, Jim (or Scott or Herman) that was a pretty raw deal the MLB pulled you. This is what we'll do for you. If BluePoint wants to do the port, we're really not making any money on the original Gears Trilogy. We've made the money we're gonna make off of it. Ya know, we can't let ya have Gears 4 and Gears 5, because we've gotta have something, but we'll work a deal with you to put the original Gears Trilogy on PlayStation for a percentage of the profits because that's how we do." That would be Phil being human and actually practicing what he preaches. No loss to Xbox because they've made their money on Gears and it's sitting in a dusty closet now. But, nope. When it looks good to the press, to seem like the good guy, you wear many masks. Phil Spencer isn't at all what he appears. That's business and that's politics. Businessman and politicians are one in the same

[ravens52]

Blasphemous olMyerslo. Ps3 left you wanting? Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3, The Last of Us, Infamous 1, Infamous 2, MGS 4, God of War 3, God of War Ascension, Heavy Rain, LittleBig Planet... Those are just some of the ones I played. There are more, including the 2 you named.

[SoulWarrior]

Yeah this honestly, the PS3 aftera wobbly couple of years was outperforming the 360 in the games department significantly, the 360 had a strong 2005-08 but it really started to fall off games wise from 2009/10, Xbox hasn't hit that same peak since.

[jznrpg]

@Zeref PS gets more games than anyone because we buy games , have one console to make games for not 2 , and Sony actually makes good new IP each generation(for Games not on Nintendo PS5 has power). The only way MS competes is buying games already on Xbox which is super lame.

[HeliosHex]

@master. It was actually just as bad. Remember Nintendo dissing sonys cd attachment for Nintendo which gave us playstation. 3do fiasco. Sega vs Nintendo there was lawsuits everywhere among consoles and devs alike which paved the way for console exclusives. It was dirty then as it is dirty now. Only difference now is you hear about it 24hrs a day thanks to the internet.

[giovonni]

@mandif Alan wake, Titanfall, halo reach, sunset over drive, dead rising 3, Ryse, sea of thieves, forza horizon 3, Metro, quantum Break and ton of others

[Extermin8or3_]

What tonne of others? You literally just named all of xbox's first party titles pretty much during the end of 360 era, the xbox one era and most of the series x era too.

[giovonni]

I mean he did ask what I played after original gears or something like that. So, that’s what I played.🤷🏾‍♂️

[EvertonFC]

All 10 year old plus games

[Unknown_Gamer5794]

At this point, I’m just going to kick back and enjoy the show.

[Trunkz]

Playstation or Microsoft who shall bribe Nintendo to help them in their favor lol

[Hofstaderman]

Why are we even debating this? The merger is dead in the water. Everything post CMA is pure spectator entertainment like a staged wrestling match. You sort of see the telegraphed moves and you know who's going to win.

[The3faces]

Dead in the water? Not hardly.

[Hofstaderman]

Dude your blind optimism is really inspiring. MS to lodge appeal Activision cheerleading them which is expected since they get 3 billion irrespective but they just going through the motions. Appeal to take two to three months but appeal council has no sway over CMA can only recommend CMA look at review from a different angle. Historically CMA has hardly ever altered its decision. Sounds dead to me. And the bitch is that they won’t be able to acquire Activision until another ten years has elapsed and then they have to reapply to the CMA. Cmon man… EU follows similar legal statuettes to UK so there now a precedent.

[BehindTheRows]

It has a 1-5% chance at a reversal IF the EU gives it the thumbs up (and I'm being generous). It's about as close to dead as the horse as you can get.

[darthv72]

A block like this doesnt kill the entire deal. They will prob use a shell company to release the games. Like how some companies who were licensed with Nintendo had to make other companies in order to get around certain restrictions. Tengen and Ultra are a couple of examples.

Ultra was an alternate company for Konami and Tengen an alternate for Atari. There have even been others who specifically made publishing companies under different names to release titles on competing platforms because Nintendo had a block on 3rd party competition.

There is always a way.

[Hofstaderman]

What’s flies in the US typically will not fly in the UK and the EU. There’s no lobbying senators over here. The CMA does not play and thanks to MS response all eyes are on this in the UK. It shall not pass and Microsoft knows this hence their strong reaction. Also the deal was not blocked due to Call of Duty it was blocked due to cloud gaming. Remember MS were given an opportunity to make structural concessions and they failed to do so to the CMAs satisfaction so that ship has sailed.

[__SteakDeck__]

@hofstadermam What if MS threatens to removes their games from the UK like Michael Pachter said they could do?

[SullysCigar]

Then Microsoft loses money and the UK carries on regardless. Seriously, Microsoft isn't likely to do that. Money, for them, comes before ANYTHING else and right after that is pride. Both would suffer, so they'll want to find another way. Whether they will or not, that's the question.

[Hofstaderman]

What if they threaten to remove their products from their second largest market? Ummmm…. They can make that threat but I’m very much absolutely certain the won’t follow up on it.

[BlaqMagiq1]

There is no way in hell MS will do that and they know that. The UK is one of the biggest markets for gaming. If they did, COD and Activision would lose TONS of money for doing that. People need to stop thinking empty threats like these are gonna change the minds of regulators.

[SoulWarrior]

The UK is Microsoft and CoDs 2nd biggest gaming market and a population of almost 70 million people, they would lose out on hundreds of millions, shareholders especially would laugh them out of the door, Pachter is a moron who cheerleads hard for MS these days and very often gets things wrong, thinking MS will pull Xbox or their entire business out of the UK are in dream land.

[Binarycode]

Nobody cares. what games.lol

[Vithar]

Merger? they are straight up buying them

[Hofstaderman]

Sorry; acquisition albeit attempted acquisition.

[neomahi]

Nintendo's never really wanted to get along with Sony anyway. Maybe if PlayStation ruffles enough feathers everyone will decide its just not worth it and give up. Nintendo has done just fine without Activisions help, why should they bother with Call of Duty now? Activision was gonna do StarCraft Ghost after porting StarCraft to the N64 and then left em high and dry. Nintendo doesn't need Activision, and they don't need Microsoft's help. Nintendo was moving along long before Microsoft

[SoulWarrior]

Exactly, if Actvision wanted to put CoD on nintendo platforms they would have, they don't need Microsoft to do this, they just know the demograph isn't there, MS are handing out these flimsy '10 year deals' like nobodies business, glad we will see exactly how that would have worked soon.

[Eonjay]

They signed the deal. They are apart of this whether they like it or not. They are all in.

[gold_drake]

things are about to kick off haha.

[Knightofelemia]

Playing nice and sharing the same bed with Microsoft comes at a price.

[Profchaos]

As someone who doesn't traditionally go for Nintendo hardware at least early I've only owned a switch for 12 months now I'm hyped to see what's next from Nintendo this should tell us.

I'm assuming it's portable given the merger of their studios to work on a singular platform has resulted in one of the biggest libraries of first party games once the GameCube era going back to split development seems like it would just slow everything down

[InsaneChronos]

Microsoft dragged Nintendo in their quagmire lawl

[HeliosHex]

Lol for some reason I feel bad for Nintendo.
Having to take time away from counting all that switch money.

[masterfox]

lol Im telling you if you side with MS be ready for issues boi!!! :D