Satya Nadella: We’re the Largest Gaming Publisher, and We’re Going to Be Everywhere on Every Platform

Xbox has been at the center of headlines these days. From Sarah Bond teasing a premium, curated Xbox experience to Phil Spencer sort of confirming about next-gen Xbox being first-party, there’s a lot going on around Xbox, at least in the news.

These remarks were followed by controversial decision to bring Halo: Combat Evolved and future Halo titles to PlayStation, something that shows Microsoft’s way forward in multiplatform publishing strategy.

Amid a lot happening for Xbox, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared on TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network) to discuss the company’s gaming ambitions. And, where he made comments on Xbox’s biggest rival isn’t another console brand, it’s short-form video platforms like TikTok.

It reminds me of remarks made by Xbox Game Studios president Matt Booty, who, in an interview with The New York Times, said that from films to TikTok, everything now competes for players’ attention.

Speaking about Microsoft’s gaming outlook after the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Nadella said the company is now the largest publisher by revenue and wants to approach gaming the same way it did with Office. Here’s what he said in the brief interview:

Remember, the biggest gaming business is the Windows business. To us, gaming on Windows, and of course Steam – has built a massive marketplace on top of it and done a very successful job of it. So to us, the way we are thinking about gaming is; let’s first of all, now we are the largest publisher, after the Activision [deal] so therefore we want to be a fantastic publisher, similar approach to what we did with Office.

We’re going to be everywhere, in every platform. We want to make sure, whether it’s consoles, whether it’s the PC, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s cloud gaming – or the TV; we just want to make sure the games are being enjoyed by gamers everywhere. Second, we also want to do innovative work in the system side, on the console and on the PC. And it’s kind of funny, people think about the console, PC as two different things. We built the console, because we wanted to build a better PC, which could then perform for gaming. So, I kind of want to revisit some of that conventional wisdom. But at the end of the day, console has an experience that is unparalleled. It delivers performance that’s unparalleled, that pushes I think, the system forward.

So I’m really looking forward to the next console, the next PC gaming, but most importantly the game business model has to be where we have to invent maybe some new interactive media as well. Because, after all, gaming’s competition is not other gaming. Gaming’s competition is short-form video. And so if we as an industry don’t continue to innovate both how we produce, what we produce, how we think about distribution, the economic model – the best way to innovate is to have good margins. Because that’s the way you can fund.

These remarks give an idea of how Microsoft is thinking about Xbox’s future, and whom it is really competing with. What do you think about Satya Nadella’s comments about consoled and gaming industry in general? Please let us know in the comments below.

via: XboxEra