While former CoreAI executive Asha Sharma’s recent appointment as the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming has raised questions about Microsoft’s future in the gaming industry, Sharma has reaffirmed that the company intends to keep going on hardware and software fronts. According to Windows Central, Sharma recently introduced Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal Q&A to discuss the company’s vision for gaming.
As part of his appearance, Nadella expressed happiness over being present, and went on to call gaming one of the “core identities” of Microsoft thanks to the amount of capital that has been invested into the division, as well as the company’s state in the gaming industry at large.
“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.”
Sharma followed up Nadella by noting that maintaining its gaming divisions is an overall part of Microsoft’s vision to be “just an excellent company, and an excellent steward for what it means to produce great games, produce great systems and hardware.”
Further in the Q&A session, Nadella spoke about his conversations with the now-former Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer about the importance of gaming for Microsoft.
“That’s why I’m long on it,” he said. “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 what 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.”
Nadella also spoke about how, while growing its gaming audience is an important aspect of business for Microsoft, the company also wants to maintain its strong and loyal fanbase of existing Xbox owners.
“We have to make sure that the friends we have today, are the friends that you have tomorrow,” said Nadella. “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.”
As for the future, Nadella discussed the potential that gaming has to be a force of good thanks to the active engagement that it demands from players rather than simply being passive entertainment like a movie or TV show. To that end, he also noted that player attention is a “finite thing” in the world, and the company has to figure out ways to “earn permissions, tastefully” to get more attention from its users.
“Attention is the a finite thing humans have,” he said. “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.”
In the meantime, Microsoft recently unveiled Project Helix – the next-generation of Xbox consoles. Sharma said that it will “lead in performance” and be able to play games from across Xbox and PC platforms. More details will seemingly be revealed at GDC.
