During Microsoft’s hearing with the US Federal Trade Commission, it has been revealed that Xbox boss Phil Spencer made the decision to make ZeniMax games exclusive to Xbox consoles in a meeting back in 2021.
According to IGN, the FTC revealed a chat conversation from November 2021 between Xbox CFO Tim Stuart and Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty where the two spoke about a meeting about Spencer making the call to make all ZeniMax games exclusive.
“All games going forward?” Stuart asked. “Not just new IP, but ALL games going forward? Wow.”
“Phil [Spencer] told them all titles going foward, Xbox exclusive,” responded Booty.
The two also talked about how not releasing ZeniMax games on PlayStation platforms would affect Microsoft’s profits, as well as how it would affect the deal Microsoft made with ZeniMax during the former’s acquisition of the latter.
“We will have [accountability margin] issues in the deal model as we pull a huge number of PS units out of model,” Stuart said.
These details have come out during a hearing between Microsoft and the FTC, which came about because the FTC didn’t want to allow Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard to move forward. Other details revealed during the hearing including the fact that Microsoft considered acquiring Sega, as well as Square Enix.