Lol. That email is a massive nothingburger if people actually read the full context and not just Tom's clickbait headline. Matt Booty is responding to Tim Stuart (CFO of Xbox). It's clearly a financial conversation, it appears to be a discussion about stopping Game Pass day one releases. He is not saying "let's go spend Sony out of business" but pointing out that "we could, if we wanted to" which is factually true. He is using hyperbole of Microsoft's financial capability to get the attention of higher level executives to invest more into Xbox and there is nothing illegal about spending money, Lol.
It's basically a throwaway conversation about the future competition and telling the CFO that they shouldn't be afraid to spend money on Xbox because they're frigging Microsoft, even if they expect Amazon/Tencent/Google/Sony to do so as well because they have more than enough money to effectively compete against them, but if they don't do so now, they may regret it in the future.
He's advocating and trying to encourage his "boss" that they should spend big now to avoid a situation in the future where they end up losing to Tencent/Amazon/Google/Sony, etc. He's trying to convince his "boss" to build on their lead in the market while they still can and not be afraid to spend a lot now, or live to regret it later.
Context and wording matters in this case, he wrote that they are "able" to, not that they will. Nowhere does it say that they wanted to spend Sony out of business but that they're in a position to do so. It's a "we could" rather than "we are" or "we should" and this is simply pure fact, Microsoft IS able to outspend Sony fairly easy so why should they we afraid to spend more money in general? There is nothing wrong with pointing out a fact. We COULD outspend the competition doesn't mean they will, or that they will succeed.
Not to mention, Matt Booty isn't in charge of the financials, Matt Booty isn't the Head of Xbox, Matt Booty isn't even the Head of Zenimax. He is only the manager of Xbox Game Studios (the 15 internal studios, not including Zenimax) who is clearly trying to get investment from his CFO. He has no final say over the overall strategy of Xbox. His job is literally just to manage the gaming studios, Lol.
It's a nothingburger because this email has been in the courts hands for months already, the judge has already seen it and she has already dismissed it, if the Gamers Lawsuit have seen it then the CMA have definitely seen it and yet they dismissed the Console SLC but are trying to block the merger, the FTC is trying to block the merger but didn't mention this email at all when they had Matt Booty on the stand, the FTC/CMA not mentioning it at all shows how relevant this email is. The regulators already knew about the email but all either approved it or didn't use it.
ABK is irrelevant too, Activision is mostly about Mobile/PC. They don't even offer that many console titles aside from CoD but MS is keeping that one multiplatform because (like Minecraft) it makes more financial sense to do so. Even in FTCs & CMA's worst case scenarios, MS doesn't even overtake Sony in the console market by making CoD exclusive. Even if someone "wants" something, it doesn't mean they can achieve it, if MS genuinely wants to put Sony out of business, it doesn't mean that ABK would allow them to do so, and that is what the law has to decide, whether they can, and based on market data, they can't.
In addition, this conversation was about Game Pass day one releases, it looks like the CFO was considering stopping doing them, so Matt exaggerated and essentially said why do that, they have so much money they can take a risk now for a payoff later. The email isn't talking about ABK at all because it far pre-dates ABK so it's simply false to say the email is about using ABK to put Sony out of business, it's not even talking about their acquisition strategy even, it's talking about Game Pass and convincing more investment.
Not to mention, Sony has been trying to push Xbox out of the console industry for years now but that's apparently okay, Lol. It's a generic ass email talking about ROI, Competition, New Markets, etc. None of it is illegal, none of it is a bad look, it's basic ass business talk. You have to ignore all context to be blinded by bias to think otherwise. People are going to be insufferable with just the first line though and go nuts!
