Xbox has left behind the famous “console wars”. According to Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, the competition now lies in the movie industry and TikTok.
This analysis is shared by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s president himself. During an interview with TBPN, the head of the American firm first discussed the convergence between the company’s gaming division and Windows in the context of the next console.
“Remember, the biggest gaming business is the Windows business,” Nadella said. “To us, gaming on Windows, and of course, Steam has built a massive marketplace on top of it and done a very successful job. So to us, the way we are thinking about gaming is, first of all, we’re now the largest publisher [after acquiring Activision].”
“So therefore, we want to be a fantastic publisher, similar in approach to what we did with Office. We’re going to be everywhere, on every platform. So we want to make sure, whether it’s consoles, whether it’s the PC, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s cloud gaming, or the TV. We just want to make sure the game is enjoyed by gamers everywhere.”
Then Nadella went on to put the emphasis on the competition not being PlayStation or even Nintendo, but rather other forms of entertainment. He specifically mentioned “short videos” on social networks such as TikTok. This is something fully integrated into the daily lives of users, who may spend more time watching videos that gaming, and Microsoft wants to counter this.
“Most importantly, the game business model has to be where we have to invent maybe some new interactive media as well, because after all, gaming’s competition is not other gaming. Gaming’s competition is short-form video,”
“And so if we as an industry don’t continue to innovate, both how we produce, what we produce, how we think about distribution, the economic model, right, the best way to innovate is to have good margins, because that’s the way you can fund.”
