by
William D’Angelo
, posted 10 minutes ago / 72 Views
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma recently held an internal Q&A with employees (via Windows Central) in which Nadella stated Microsoft will “always” invest in gaming and Xbox.
“There are core identities in this company,” said Nadella. “I don’t think Microsoft will exist without these identities continuing to thrive. We’re a platform company, a developer company. Being a knowledge worker company, and gaming.
“These are the main identities of what Microsoft has always meant, and will always mean. Therefore, we need to take that — we don’t take it for granted. We need to renew it. I’m really thankful to Matt [Booty] and Phil [Spencer] and Sarah [Bond], and all of you who have built this franchise into its 25th year.”
He added, “Frankly this applies to anything that we do. We should be in the core of what we do here for gaming’s sake. It’s not about anything other than being just an excellent company, and an excellent steward for what it means to produce great games, produce great systems and hardware.
“The trickle from that excellence to the rest of the company becomes straight forward. I joke with [NVIDIA CEO] Jensen Huang, if it wasn’t for gaming [NVIDIA] wouldn’t exist. Think about it, without DirectX, I don’t think the entire GPU revolution, or the acceleration would’ve happened.
“That’s why I’m long on it. Phil, he’s always talked to me about how gaming is the largest entertainment category — what is gaming in its most expansive form going forward? This doesn’t mean we walk away from people are doing today — when we think about a AAA game on a console. The question is about where else can we go to extend that. For me, we’re long on gaming. We’ll continue to invest, and we’ll always do so. It’s up to this team to show an excellence in execution, and creativity. Software always carries risk, but this is software with lots of creation risk. It’s way different. But yet, we have to be the best-in-class at it.”
Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma stated she has been spending as much time with the different teams at Xbox and that great games can’t be “manufactured,” but instead need to be “crafted.”
I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how I can empower these worlds, these stories, and these characters,” she said.
Satya chimed in stating, “The storytelling, why do we love games? They tell the stories, the mythologies that make us who we are. Getting down to that core, the craft that goes with it, this is the place where we have to get the cultural zeitgeist and then have it manifest in everything that we do. In the games, in the marketing approach, everything that we do in this brand represents that.”
The CEO added that Xbox “at its best lifts the entire company” and hopes other parts of Microsoft can learn from Xbox. Gaming “emotionally touches us” and he “always” wants that aspect of Microsoft to exist.
Sharma did acknowledge Xbox has been facing difficulties of late as it has been in a transition phase. “Everything is being relitigated” when it come to Xbox’s strategy.
“We have to make sure that the friends we have today, are the friends that you have tomorrow,” said Satya on Xbox’s existing customers. “You want to wake up feeling like your friendship has even grown stronger. We have to really make sure, whether it’s console, whether it’s PC, whether it’s the lover of Forza, Halo, we really want to make sure they love us for what they expect us to do.”
He added, “Attention is the a finite thing humans have. How can we earn permission, tastefully, for more of that attention? It brings joy back … that’s the thing I always think about. Gaming is an active engagement. It’s not that passive ‘scrolling’ on things, and so on. I do want us to be the ones to bring back that active engagement. That’s what console and PC represents in some sense. Why do people love the controller, the console, or their PC … it’s because you’re immersed. I look at the reports. The level of hijacking of our attention that’s going on … I want us to reverse that. Joy in coding, joy in gaming, that’s all I want us to live in. If we can bring that back, I think the world would be a better place for it.”
“I want us to keep rediscovering that moment. The games people love, the consoles and systems people love, and really just doing the best job we can as a company. That’s it. And that’s all I want us to do,” Nadella concluded. “For those fans who have counted on us, I just want to make sure that we live up to what they expect of us. I know there’s a lot of feedback … believe me, I’m on Twitter too sometimes … but I really think it’s that passion, though, that they have. This is the base of folks who just want us to do a fantastic job, of really doing what we’re meant to do as team Xbox.”
Microsoft last week announced its next-generation Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix. It will lead in performance and be able to play Xbox and PC games.
“Great start to the morning with Team Xbox, where we talked about our commitment to the return of Xbox including Project Helix, the code name for our next generation console,” said Sharma at the time.
“Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games. Looking forward to chatting about this more with partners and studios at my first GDC next week!”
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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