Sony's ``black-painted document'' submitted in the trial was sweetened, confidential information leaked out, ``Call of Duty'' earnings and AAA title production costs turned out



In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the masking process that should be performed on confidential documents submitted by Sony was inappropriate, so important confidential information about the game business was fully understood. It was revealed by the report of the IT news site The Verge.

Sony's confidential PlayStation secrets just spilled because of a Sharpie - The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777298/sony-ftc-microsoft-confidential-documents-marker-pen-scanner-oops

The document in question was filed by Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, as part of the FTC v. Microsoft trial. The document had been blacked out in important areas, but scanning made some of it easily legible.

Below are some of the Sony documents that journalists downloaded before the court took them down. If you zoom in and look closely, you can see the numbers faintly emerging from the blackened part.



As a result, Horizon Forbidden West, released in February 2022, required 300 employees and $212 million (about 30.5 billion yen) in development costs over five years. It was found that The Last of Us Part II, released in June 2020, had 200 employees and a development cost of $ 220 million (about 31.7 billion yen).

In addition, from another part, many PlayStation users spend most of their time playing Call of Duty, such as `` Approximately 1 million people spend 100% of their playing time on Call of Duty. got it.



The document is meant to show how Sony's bottom line would be hit hard if Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard and made Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. Sony has long expressed concern about Microsoft's Call of Duty monopoly, and this document confirms how serious it is.

The reliance on Call of Duty is also reflected in revenue figures, with Call of Duty bringing in $800 million in revenue to the PlayStation business in 2021 alone, and $1.5 billion worldwide. Approximately 216 billion yen). Moreover, this is the number of the game alone, including all peripherals and subscriptions, the scale is 13.9 billion dollars (about 2.044 trillion yen) annually, 15.9 billion depending on the interpretation of the unclear black part It reaches the dollar (about 2,293.4 billion yen).



Sony's materials also show the results of an internal survey that ``Almost half of PlayStation 5 owners in the United States own a Nintendo Switch, while less than 20% have an Xbox Series X|S.'' was

According to The Verge, it's unclear who made the poor edits to Sony's document. The lawsuit was filed by the FTC against Microsoft, and Sony is not a party to the lawsuit. Sony has repeatedly asked the court to seal or redact some of the material.

in Game, Posted by log1l_ks