Microsoft is apparently pivoting away from a future where content is locked to a single platform, and towards one where content is platform agnostic, and users can access it from anywhere, any time- this mandate is in keeping with the company’s larger move towards services, and is best characterized by initiatives such as Play Anywhere, or Minecraft‘s Play Together update.
And speaking at the the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco (transcription via DualShockers), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed his vision for the future of gaming- which is, notably, a future where people have the “ability to game anywhere”.
“That’s where we’re going, whether it is with our subscription offerings with Game Pass, whether it’s with Mixer, which is growing very rapidly, in terms of streaming, or eSports franchises around our first-party games,” Nadella said. “So I think we have many, many leverages there. But fundamentally, it comes from that heritage of having been in the gaming business for multiple decades at this point and built up that capability in a world where we now have the ability to take that and have it service a much broader marketplace than ever before.”
It is definitely a transition I can see Microsoft making- the company as a whole has started to move towards a services based future, with offerings such as Office and OneDrive available on Apple and Google’ competing platforms, over just Microsoft’s own, as an example- I am just curious about how, in the end, the company plans to maintain a console platform without bespoke exclusives to drive people towards buying it.