Microsoft's new strategy to release some of its Xbox games on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch seems to please the company's boss. He once again showed his enthusiasm for the release of internally developed games on other platforms.
Microsoft CEO wants his games everywhere
Xbox is a brand that was built with the primary intention of competing with PlayStation. But since the 2000s, the outsider from the United States has come a long way and is now among the world's largest publishers, notably thanks to the acquisition of numerous studios.
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While Xbox was focused on creating unique content for its own platform, the shift made at the start of 2024 shows a strategic shift to reach an ever-wider audience.
Last January, Satya Nadella, current CEO of Microsoft, had already shown his desire to distribute his own games beyond Xbox consoles.
Obviously we're very, very excited about everything that's happening in gaming, especially with the Activision Blizzard King takeover. We believe that now we have the ability to do what we always wanted to do, which is to create great games and bring them to players on all platforms, which is to say the Xbox and consoles, PCs, and now even mobile gaming and cloud gaming.
Xbox game performance on PlayStation shows it works
We saw it very recently, Xbox's revenue growth today only relies on those generated by Activision Blizzard King. Without this buyout, the financial analyst Daniel Ahmad estimates that Xbox revenues would be down around -5% compared to last year. We therefore easily understand why Microsoft needs to release its exclusives on a greater number of platforms in order to reach more players and generate additional revenue.
While sales of Xbox consoles are down -30% compared to last year, it is in the field of games, services and subscriptions that Microsoft intends to elbow its way. The arrival of Hi-Fi RUSH, Pentiment and more recently Sea of Thieves on PlayStation clearly demonstrates Microsoft's ambitions.
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Even if Phil Spencer, boss of the Xbox division, spoke of “case by case” to decide which internal games will be released on competing consoles, we suspect that it is far from over. The CEO of Microsoft said in June 2023 that he wanted to put an end to exclusives: “If it were up to me, I'd like to get rid of all console exclusives, but that's not up to us to define given we're a low-share player in the console market. Sony defined market competition using exclusives, so that's the world we live in. I don't like this world. »
Just recently, we saw that the top 25 best-selling games on the PlayStation Store included more Xbox games than Sony-developed games. Who could have believed it two years ago?
When announcing Microsoft's latest financial results, Satya Nadella recalled how important this new strategy was to its games.
We're expanding our games to new platforms, bringing four of our fan-favorite games to Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation for the first time.
In fact, at the start of this month, we had 7 games in the top 25 on the PlayStation Store, more than any other publisher.
When a CEO wants to go in a direction, teams usually have no choice but to follow it. And even if the new Xbox strategy is causing a lot of talk internally and causing some financial turmoil, in the short and medium term, in any case it already seems to be bearing fruit.