In a document sent toFTC (Federal Trade Commision), Microsoft he claimed to know practically nothing about the series Call of Duty. Which is quite strange given that it is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard, the publisher of the COD franchise, for around $70 billion.
In fact what the document, a 37-page response to the FTC’s lawsuit to block the transaction, claims is questionable, if not downright ridiculous:
“Microsoft says it does not have enough information to form an accurate opinion on the legitimacy of allegations regarding industry perception Call of Duty and Call of Duty’s original launch date; or as to the truth of allegations related to the launch of Call of Duty and the scheduling and resources allocated by Activision Call of Duty, including the number of studios working on Call of Duty.”
Just google “Call of Duty original release date” to find:
Release date of the first Call of Duty
Or a quick consultation of the franchise page on Wikipedia is enough to obtain the precious information. In short, we are not talking about stuff that must be found by digging into the dark web.
The claims about the budget and the development studios involved in the franchise are also highly questionable: Microsoft wants to acquire Activision Blizzard for a pharaonic price, which was also formed on the basis of this information. Or does the house of Redmond want us to believe that it has blindly agreed to pay $70 billion?
Also, in the lawsuit Epic Games filed against Apple, Microsoft brought an internal document in which it outlined with some precision information on all of its most important direct competitors and now wants us to believe that it knows nothing about Activision Blizzard and COD?
In short, we understand defensive strategies and we also understand that in this case it is not possible to easily demonstrate what Microsoft knows and what it does not know, but certain exits could easily be avoided.
