2023 has been a very “interesting” year for Xbox. On one hand, its latest consoles, the Xbox Series X/S, haven’t been selling as much as the PS5 or the Nintendo Switch. On the other hand, their Xbox Game Pass has been doing well enough and even had certain records beaten thanks to games released by Bethesda, whom they own. But the most dominating storyline of the year was Microsoft’s battle with Sony and the FTC to try and acquire Activision Blizzard. They tried to buy the company for about $65 billion, and it took quite a long time to get the deal to go through.
Eventually, the deal was ratified, and that has led to big claims by Microsoft and Xbox across the board. One such claim came from company CEO Satya Nadella, who stated to MSN that they would “double down” on the Xbox gaming side of things due to the acquisition they’ve just made:
“For us, there are a few things that go all the way back for us as a company. Gaming is one, right? When I think about Microsoft, I think of perhaps developer tools, proprietary software, and gaming. Those are three things that we’ve done from the very beginning. And so, to us, gaming is the one place where we think we have a real contribution to make in consumer markets.”
That “contribution” is bolstered by the IPs they now own, thanks to the Activision Blizzard purchase. But Nadella also noted that they want to see where the next step in gaming is taken and want to be a part of that:
“The way games are made, the way the games are delivered, is changing radically. Whether it’s mobile, or consoles, or PCs, or even the cloud. So, we’re looking forward to really doubling down both as a game producer and a publisher. Now we’ll be one of the largest game publishers and also as a company that’s building platforms for it.”
He’s not wrong on certain elements of those statements. With Activision Blizzard, they now have far more capabilities than they did before regarding making 1st party titles and ensuring that the Xbox line of systems has what it takes to compete with Sony and Nintendo, who have dominated the market every gaming generation.
The question will be whether they can use this to their advantage to not only boost sales but take sales away from the other systems. Only time will tell how they use their new asset.
