The morning of June 22nd, Microsoft stepped onto the battlefield where it would go up against the Federal Trade Commission of America to get its $69 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard through.

So what strategy did Microsoft choose in its opening statement? “we have lost the console wars’ they said. It’s a bold move, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off.

“Xbox has lost the console wars, and its rivals are positioned to continue to dominate”. said Microsoft in its filings. They also stated that “Xbox’s console has consistently ranked third (of three) behind PlayStation in sales,” 

Their desire to paint themselves as the underdogs is founded in truth. The original Xbox sold very slightly more than the Nintendo Gamecube but was utterly destroyed by the PlayStation 2 which remains the best-selling console ever. The Xbox 360 came next and is currently Microsoft’s most popular console, but the PlayStation 3 still outsold it, albeit not by too much. The Xbox One was soundly trounced by the PlayStation 4, while the current Xbox Series S/X has only managed to sell about half of what the PS5 has done, and Nintendo’s Switch has become the third highest-selling console of all time.

In this sense, then, Microsoft is actually the underdog, but it’s hard to imagine a company as vast as Microsoft being the plucky hero in any scenario. Their planned purchase of Activision-Blizzard is proof of that, the $69 billion being over half of Sony’s total market value at the time of writing and around two-thirds of Nintendo’s.

A large part of the FTCs argument against the deal is over concerns that Microsoft might lock all future Activision-Blizzard games, like Call of Duty, to Xbox. Pete Hines took to the stand on the first day of the June 22nd hearing to be grilled about Bethesda’s games becoming Xbox exclusives after they were bought by Microsoft.

As part of the questioning, Pete Hines confirmed that the upcoming Indiana Jones game they are working on will be an Xbox exclusive title

Somewhat amusingly, the FTC used Redfall as an example of a triple-A title becoming an Xbox exclusive after its developer was bought, to which Pete Hines said, “There might be some differences of opinion on the AAA part but that was our intent, yes.”

Really throwing Redfall under the bus, are we, Pete? Although, Redfall was kind of whelming and even Arkane Austin didn’t seem to want to make it.

All of this is, of course, a bunch of legal wrangling designed to get the deal past the goalpost, but it’s still hilarious to see Microsoft open its defence by admitting that it is losing badly.