Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) accidentally published non-public information when providing documents to the court as part of the case brought against the company by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In a court order Tuesday, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, said that Microsoft seemingly inadvertently provided the court with a version of documents that "contained non-public information" to the link designated for public documents in the trial. The documents have since been removed.
The offending documents include a slide on “the next generation of gaming at Microsoft,” including plans for a new cloud hybrid Xbox console with a release targeted for 2028.
The slide references a “thin OS” for “consumer or handheld devices,” which suggests Microsoft is developing a handheld device for users to play cloud-boosted games. That, plus the cloud hybrid designation for the next-gen Xbox, could indicate a sort of Nintendo Switch-esque hardware for mobile gaming.
The leaked presentation also projects gaming revenue doubling to $36 billion in the 2030 fiscal year, up from a forecast of $18 billion for the 2022 fiscal year. Microsoft’s actual fiscal 2022 gaming revenue was $16.23 billion.
The leaked documents don’t directly mention Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard Inc (NASDAQ:ATVI) acquisition deal, which is at the heart of the FTC case. They do, however, mention Activision’s prowess in mobile gaming - a huge area of potential growth for Microsoft if the deal goes through.
“Activision is really a mobile first publisher,” Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft’s gaming business, wrote in a 2020 email to finance chief Amy Hood and others that was included in the leak.
Microsoft hopes to close the acquisition by October 18.
Contact Andrew Kessel at andrew.kessel@proactiveinvestors.com
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