Xbox Studios head Matt Booty said Microsoft could “spend Sony out of business” in a 2019 email uploaded as evidence in an ongoing antitrust trial in San Francisco.

In an email to Xbox’s chief financial officer Tim Stuart, Booty said, “We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business.”

Booty said that in ten years, the company would look back and say, it would have been worth spending $2 or $3 billion in 2020 to stay ahead of the competition.

…

Lee Hepner, legal counsel at anti-monopoly advocacy group the American Economic Liberties Project, had previously said in an interview that Booty’s terminology was monopolistic. “They want to build a ‘moat’ around their console, which is antitrust slang for boxing out competitors. This is essentially the bulk of the FTC’s case in one email.”

###