Seems like you can hide the pitchforks right now. Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Amy Wood discussed the Xbox Division, Xbox One and gaming at a recent interview at the UBS Global Technology Conference. She stressed that the Xbox One and the Gaming Division as a whole was ‘fundamentally important’ to the future of Microsoft.
“Xbox is financially relevant to Microsoft, people should not be confused about the journey of improvement we have been on in the past two years in the Xbox business.”
This refers to the Xbox Division showing revenue gains in the last quarter, being up year over year by 6%. Xbox Live also showed improvement with engagement reaching 39 Million active users.
“I think about the importance of gaming. I would actually literally, very specifically talk about the importance of gaming to us; you’ve seen the investments we’ve made; you’ve seen us talk about gaming and its importance across all form factors for us, be it the PC, be it a phone, be it the console itself, I think we’ve done a very good job of taking something that sort of sat outside the Windows ecosystem and made it part of the Windows ecosystem. So that gaming value accrues back to the ecosystem and to the developers who work there. I would say gaming is fundamentally important. The Xbox brand is still an incredibly powerful brand; gaming PCs are amongst the most lucrative businesses to be in, gaming as a category is quite profitable and I feel good about how we’ve changed the landscape of what that looks like as a company.”
It’s been widely speculated that Microsoft wasn’t completely on the bandwagon with Xbox after some comments by Phil Spencer on the competition made people feel uneasy. With the continued push with some Xbox exclusives moving to the Xbox Live service on PC as well, and Xbox Live being free to PC users, some Xbox fans have been feeling left out as Microsoft diversifies it’s reach.
With the CEO and CFO of Microsoft fully on board with Xbox and Gaming, we can rest assured that the platform and service will not be going anywhere. And with Xbox One showing more promise day by day with features and games coming exclusively to the platform, fans will be pleased to see how Microsoft pushed to ensure that they are happy with the platform they hold dear.
