Microsoft Confirms It’s Investing Aggressively in Gaming
Microsoft announced an unprecedented expansion buying more gaming studios. The company is indicating its intention to be the market leader, especially on subscription-based services like Xbox Game Pass. The company purchased acclaimed developers: Obsidian Entertainment, creators of Fallout: New Vegas and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and inXile Entertainment (Wasteland series). Xbox and PC players will be excited about the addition of Obsidian, adding invaluable RPG knowledge.
Microsoft embarked on a studio-spending spree this year. Xbox Chief Phil Spencer announced at E3 2018, that Microsoft acquired four studios: Ninja Theory (Hellblade, DmC), Playground Games (Forza Horizon), Undead Labs (State of Decay) and Compulsion Games (Contrast, We Happy Few). They’ve also established a new internal studio called The Initiative, led by the former studio head at Crystal Dynamics.
In a new report by WCCFtech, Satya Nadella, Head of Microsoft outlined the company’s gaming ambitions. Nadella reported that Microsoft’s gaming revenue surpassed $10 billion during the last fiscal year. He provided insight into Microsoft’s plan to aggressively invest in content and cloud services for gaming.
“… in gaming, we’re pursuing an expansive opportunity from the way games are created and distributed to how they’re played and viewed,” Nadella said. “And we’re investing aggressively in the content, community and cloud services across every endpoint to expand the usage and deepen engagement with gamers, including the 57 million monthly Xbox Live users. Finally, we added seven new gaming studios to bolster the first party content for fast growing gaming services like Xbox Game Pass subscription service as well as Mixer.”
Another Microsoft representative said that the Xbox Game Pass should expand beyond the usual audience, similar to Spotify for music and Netflix for video. Project xCloud will provide a high quality experience with PC and consoles on any device.
Today, four billion people are connected to the Internet and over two billion play games online. As Satya mentioned, over the next decade we’re going to continue to create amazing content and games, invest in the cloud and build communities that allow anyone to participate. We have a mix of incredible games for people of all ages but we want to make it easier to discover new games and play them either on your Xbox or your PC.
Earlier this year, we introduced the Xbox Game Pass, a content subscription service for gaming. Just like with Spotify and Netflix have done for music and video, Xbox Game Pass will allow us to reach beyond the two billion people playing games today. With over a hundred games available for just $10 a month, we are truly excited to bring gaming to everyone. But we’re also building a robust cloud platform so that anyone can play the games they want with the people they want at any time and place, and most importantly, on any device.
Earlier this year, we announced Project xCloud, our future streaming gaming platform with the goal of delivering a quality experience for all gamers on all devices. We’re building a service that’s consistent with the speed and high fidelity that gamers expect on their PCs and their consoles.
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