It's going to be a busy week of Activision Blizzard news with the major FTC hearing kicking off today, and something that's come out of it already is a statement from PlayStation boss Jim Ryan about Activision and future console plans.
These comments actually date back to April, when Ryan explained to the FTC that if Activision Blizzard was to become owned by Microsoft, it would no longer be possible to share plans about the next PlayStation console with them. Here's a snippet from the document shared by Stephen Totilo earlier today:
"We simply could not run the risk of a company that was owned by a direct competitor having access to that information."
Ryan then went on to talk a bit more about why he feels Microsoft wouldn't be incentivised to work with Activision Blizzard on games that take advantage of unique PlayStation features in the future:
"I believe that their incentives — their primary incentive will, at post-acquisition, would be to optimise its overall Xbox business, not the business of Activision."
Of course, the danger of Activision Blizzard not having access to future PlayStation plans is that it'd take much longer for the teams to get acquainted on how to develop for those consoles. Therefore, it seems Ryan is arguing that Microsoft would struggle to achieve parity across Xbox and PlayStation for early-gen Activision Blizzard games.
Ultimately, The PlayStation boss's comments here are just one small part of a much bigger discussion that'll be ongoing for the next week, with the hearing set to conclude next Thursday, June 29th. After that, it'll be determined whether the FTC is granted a preliminary injuction or not, which could have a major effect on whether the deal goes through.