Secret and highly confidential documents, which were accidently leaked during ther recent FTC v. Microsoft, have revealed that as Sony Playstation executives were trying to deny Australians warranty claims on their PlayStation games such as Call Of Duty,  resulting in a$3.5M fine they were raking in close to $2.2 billion from the sale of the game.

Information about its PlayStation business was released by mistake overnight included in the documents that Sony has desperately tried to hide, was a document from PlayStation chief Jim Ryan that includes redacted details on the margins Sony shares with publishers, its Call of Duty revenues, and even the cost of developing some of its games.

One document reveals that Sony raked in a billion dollars alone in the US for CoD.

The court has scrambled to remove the document, but the damage is done; reporters and Sony’s competition have already downloaded all the documents while they were in the public domain.

This is the same Sony division that the Federal Court ordered to pay $3.5 million in penalties for making false and misleading representations to consumers in an effort to save money.

The Court was told that Sony Europe made misleading representations to four consumers who believed they had purchased faulty PlayStation games including CoD.

Sony representatives told Australian consumers that they had no obligation to refund the game once it had been downloaded, or if 14 days had passed since it was purchased.

Now it’s been revealed how much money Sony is making from their Playstation business.

Among other things, the document shows that Horizon Forbidden West apparently cost $212 million over five years with 300 employees, and The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million with around 200 employees:

Sony says 1 million PlayStation gamers play nothing but Call of Duty.

The Verge analysed the document and they came to the conclusion that In 2021, over [14] million users (by device) spent 30 percent or more of their time playing Call of Duty, over 6 million users spent more than 70% of their time on Call of Duty, and about 1 million users spent 100% of their gaming time on Call of Duty.

In 2021, Call of Duty players spent an average of [11] hours per year playing Call of Duty. Call of Duty players spending more than 70 percent of their time on Call of Duty spent an average of 296 hours on the franchise.

Sony supplied this information to the Federal Trade Commission in an attempt to show that its revenues would be heavily impacted if Call of Duty was an Xbox exclusive.

In multiple filings to regulators, Sony has maintained that it fears Microsoft could make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox or even sabotage the PlayStation versions of the game.

The leaked document reveals that CoD is worth A$2.1 billion globally to Sony and that’s just the game alone, but when you count accessories, subscriptions, and everything else, then that jumps to be $26.3 billion a year.

The documents also reveal that around half of PS5 owners also have a Nintendo Switch.

The FTC and Microsoft have continually been arguing over whether the Switch is a competitor to the Xbox and PS5 during this hearing, and Sony’s data is even clearer evidence of the makeup of console ownership.

It’s also been revealed that 20% of PlayStation 5 owners in the United States own an Xbox Series X or S.

Sony isn’t the only one affected by document redaction issues, though. A confidential Microsoft document revealed all of the company’s Xbox acquisition targets earlier this week, and now that document has disappeared and has been replaced with a heavily redacted version. (See separate story).