Microsoft Boss Discusses Gaming Strategy: “We Are Absolutely Very, Very Much Focused on Gaming”

Microsoft just hosted its Annual Shareholders Meeting, and the company’s executives had interesting comments to share about the Xbox and gaming business.

Firstly, CEO Satya Nadella was asked by a shareholder what Xbox is doing to set itself apart and to win the console war against PS5, and to provide a overview of Microsoft’s gaming strategy.

Nadella talked about the new console launch and pledged focus on gaming.

“Sure. First thing, we’re very excited about the new console launches in the market. We always have sort of focused on ensuring that our gamer community, that counts on us to produce the best consoles, has a new generation of consoles, which are powerful and, you know, really great for gameplay. And we are supporting it with the best content and with the best community.

But the broader vision we have is to ensure that the 3 billion gamers out there are able to play their games anywhere they want with all the content they want and with whom they want tom and that’s really what we are building our strategy around. You’ve seen us double our content portfolio with the ZeniMax acquisition. You see us make advances in our community efforts and our subscription offers with Game Pass. And that’s what you can expect from us. We are absolutely very, very much focused on gaming, and ensuring that all the 3 billion gamers around the world get the best content, best community, and the best cloud services to power their gaming experiences going forward.”

We also heard from CFO Amy Hood, who talked about the overall results in the past fiscal year and the ZeniMax acquisition.

“In gaming, revenue exceeded 11 billion dollars as we continue to expand our opportunity to reach the world’s 3 billion gamers. We saw record levels of engagement and monetization across the platform and strong momentum in our Game Pass subscription services as new fans took advantage of content from over a hundred studios.

Now, a few comments on the current fiscal year. First, we announced our plans to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the largest privately-held game developers and publishers in the world. This addition, which we expect to close in the second half of this fiscal year, will further bolster our first-party content and fast-growing subscription services.”

Incidentally, just today Microsoft announced the acquisition of eSport platform Smash.gg. You can also read about the company’s latest financial results in gaming.