Microsoft says FTC’s letter on Game Pass price increase is ‘misleading’

Last week, the FTC filed a letter with the court, claiming that Microsoft had begun abusing its market power by changing the way Game Pass works. Now, Microsoft has officially responded, stating that the FTC's argument is “misleading”. 

As spotted by The Verge, Microsoft's response has now been filed with the court, stating that the FTC's letter is “misleading” and doesn't offer a fair representation of the facts. For starters, Microsoft argues that its new Game Pass Standard tier is not a “degraded” version of Game Pass for Console, which is being discontinued.

While the new standard Game Pass tier does not offer day-one games, it does package in Xbox Live multiplayer, which Game Pass for Console did not previously include. As a result, subscribers are actually saving money with the Game Pass standard subscription, versus the old setup, which required Xbox players to subscribe to both Game Pass Core and Game Pass for Console in order to have access to the full Game Pass library, as well as online multiplayer.

While Game Pass Ultimate is seeing a price rise, Microsoft argues that the addition of major day-one games like Call of Duty justifies the change-up. Microsoft also argues that this is an attempt by the FTC to reframe its theory of harm argument. Previously, the FTC attempted to block the Microsoft-Activision merger on the grounds that Microsoft would foreclose on competition by withholding games like COD from rival platforms like PlayStation. Microsoft signed legally binding agreements to ensure these titles remain on competing platforms and cloud services moving forward and as a result, the deal was allowed to go through, despite the FTC's objections.

The FTC has since been appealing to get the merger reversed, but so far, updates on the appeal have been slow.

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KitGuru Says: It is highly unlikely at this stage that the FTC manages to win its case. If they had chose different arguments from the outset, it may have had more success, but Microsoft thoroughly dismantled the FTC's original theory of harm. 

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