It"s fair to say that Microsoft"s E3 2013 conference did not go as well as the company had hoped, thanks to its focus on far more than gaming. In the months following the announcement, the Reddit community in particular took up a holy crusade against the console and that caused Microsoft to step back on some of its ambitions. Even to this day, there is still a small sentiment that Microsoft jumped too far away from its core with Xbox One but Nadella is making it clear that the focus is on gaming.
After Nadella posted his open letter to all employees of Microsoft, he went on a small interview circuit. During this round of interviews, he spoke to Cnet and when asked about Xbox and his plans for the console, Nadella responded with the following:
I"m so glad to have Xbox as a franchise, especially at a time when gaming is becoming even more important -- as a digital life category and in the mobile world. The most time spent? Games. The most money spent? Games. Xbox is one of the most revered, loved brands in games. I look at that and say I want that team to be super ambitious about gaming...It doesn"t matter that it"s not core to productivity...We"re in Xbox because we want to win in gaming, delight customers in gaming, and want to grow that fan base. I wanted to make that explicit because I think it"s OK for a large company like ours to be proud of things where we are having a high impact outside of the core.
We added the emphasis on the word games but you can tell by his response that gaming is the focus of the console. Not TV, not streaming media, not anything else right now, just gaming. For the hardcore gamers on the Xbox One, this will obviously be a welcome sign as Nadella is the top of the org chart and what ever he says, goes.
While we still expect Microsoft to push original content via TV shows, as those deals are already in the works and some have already been released, the focus is still on games for Nadella.
Source: Cnet | Image via Microsoft