Microsoft claims it has no idea when Call of Duty came out

Almost a year has passed since Microsoft expressed its desire to acquire Activision Blizzard, planning

get very popular gaming games this wayfranchises like Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush and Diablo. The deal is currently being reviewed by various regulators who are worried that Microsoft might make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox. And then suddenly the company’s lawyers began to pretend that they didn’t understand why the CoD series was so special and when it came out in the first place!

As Matt Stoller points out, the company's 37-page response to the FTC's lawsuit to block Activision Blizzard's deal contains this hilarious passage:

“Microsoft claims that itlacks knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations regarding the industry's perception of Call of Duty and the initial release date of Call of Duty; or regarding the veracity of allegations regarding the launch of Call of Duty and the typical release schedule, as well as the resources and budget that Activision devotes to Call of Duty, including the number of studios working on Call of Duty.”

I wonder if Microsoft's lawyers know how to use the Google search engine????

Even forgetting that most of what Microsoft is asking for is publicly available to the FTC, it is unlikely that they have information about the budget for CoD games or other financial details.