A lot of talk right now revolves around Microsoft and Xbox’s strategy for its first-party games. The latest rumor to date, the release of Hi-Fi Rush on the Nintendo Switch has the community questioning the real intentions of the American firm. And Satya Nadella’s recent statement also goes in the same direction.
Microsoft’s investment in AI is paying off
Last week, Microsoft’s capitalization surpassed Apple’s to become the world’s largest market capitalization at no less than $2,900 billion. News that hasn’t gone unnoticed in the tech world and that shows real excitement around Microsoft following the strategic shift it has undertaken with AI, and specifically the multi-billion dollar investment in ChatGPT. A real AI race has begun between Microsoft, Apple, Google and even Amazon, and Microsoft seems to be one step ahead today.
When Microsoft’s boss, Satya Nadella, recently addressed his company’s annual general meeting of shareholders, he did not fail to recall the shift being made towards AI, and especially in view of concerns regarding video games. Asked about the Xbox business at Microsoft and spotted by Gamefile, Satya Nadella praised AI’s contribution to the future of game development.
When I think about AI, what we’re doing at the infrastructure level, or what we’re going to do at the edge, is the same set of transistors that were first used for graphics and which, guess what, are used for. AI. You can connect the dots and see why the games will be more strategic for us.
Are Xbox games on other consoles bigger now than ever before?
It’s hard to see at the moment what revolutions could come into play with the advent of AI in video games, but Microsoft’s CEO also made a very interesting statement about the overall Xbox strategy.
Obviously, we’re very excited about everything that’s happening in gaming, especially with the Activision Blizzard King takeover. We believe we now have the ability to do what we’ve always wanted to do, which is to create great games and bring them to players on all platforms, from Xbox and consoles, to PCs, and now even mobile gaming and the cloud. Gaming
We are excited for the future. We want to do our best in the gaming field. This is a core business for us, but I also see huge synergies between what we do upstream and downstream of Al. I always say that Microsoft is not a conglomerate. We have a platform that we express in multiple different addressable markets and gaming is one of them.
It’s surprising to see Microsoft bosses talking about the release of games on Xbox and other consoles, and to those who aren’t necessarily as immersed in video games as Phil Spencer, it could be a language blunder. But reading that Microsoft wants to “make great games and offer them to players on all platforms,” and seeing the precision that goes after “Xbox and consoles” is cause for question.
Is Microsoft ready to become a cross-platform publisher? Satya Nadella’s response may well go in this direction, especially since he mentioned something “we’ve always wanted to do.” We also remember that Satya Nadella wanted to end Xbox exclusives and blamed Sony for using this practice to define the market and competition.
If it were up to me, I’d want to get rid of all console exclusives, but it’s not up to us to define ourselves as a low share player in the console market. Sony has defined the market competition using exclusives, so the world we live in. I don’t like this world.
For a long time, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that Microsoft wants to reach more than 3 billion gamers in the world, and some of them play only on PlayStation or Nintendo consoles. Will Xbox take this route? For now, we have to be content with this statement which sows doubt and await future clarification.