Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company intends to double down on gaming.
In an interview with Business Insider, Satya was asked about the recently closed purchase of Activision Blizzard King. Satya said that gaming was an important market for Microsoft, and then he said this:
“We’re looking forward to really doubling down both as a game producer and publisher.”
Microsoft has gone through a messy, complicated road to get where they are in gaming. Their ascent actually started slowly, with the mass adoption of DOS and IBM computers in the 1980s to early 1990s. Windows 1995 was the breakout OS, trumping Apple and a host of smaller competitors with bespoke OSes, such as Commodore, Atari, etc.
While Microsoft was right to make Windows an open platform, increasing the popularity of PCs by making them a gaming and productivity platform, they sent mixed messages when they entered the console industry with the Xbox, a closed system not entirely compatible with Windows programs.
Windows would continue to be the gaming OS of choice for five decades, but Microsoft would fail to capitalize on emerging trends, seeing Valve launch Steam and not properly respond to it in time with their own storefront.
Many of Microsoft’s gaming initiatives through the years, such as Games for Windows Live, Windows Mobile, and Universal Windows Platform, would falter for one reason or another. Their Xbox business has been more successful, but has seen its share of ebbs and flows.
Today, Microsoft has built a unified PC and console platform through Game Pass. They have successfully transitioned to live service games with Halo Infinite, and also invested in cloud gaming.
Their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King follows their acquisition of Bethesda/Zenimax, giving them not only a library of valuable historical IP on their platform, but a significant army of game developers and staff ready to make Microsoft money with games, that they will sell on multiple storefronts.
A lot of credit for this really goes to Phil Spencer, who was there for many of these flubs, but slowly built on a vision of a Microsoft that would become priceless in how they had so many arms into the video game industry.
Their future plans to create their own third party app store on mobile may be their big gamble, but even if that falters, the company will still be in a strong position to become a mainstay of the industry all the way into the future.
