Recently, Asha Sharma, the new head of Microsoft’s Xbox, issued a memo outlining the goals and vision for future hardware, services and other businesses. The company's next core indicator will focus on the "number of daily active players" and promote the overall layout around the four major directions of hardware, content, experience and services.
Sharma pointed out that in addition to continuing to strengthen the subscription business model, acquisitions are still one of the feasible strategies for Xbox in the future. She said when certain areas within the company are growing too slowly, they can expand more efficiently through mergers and acquisitions. For example, Microsoft has acquired gaming industry giants such as Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax Media in recent years.
Although Microsoft is unlikely to acquire another large game company in the future. But it remains open to acquiring smaller studios. At the same time, we will systematically evaluate exclusive game strategies, but refuse to act hastily. We will adopt a data-driven and strategy-driven approach and review existing principles before making decisions.
In recent years, Microsoft has actively promoted a multi-platform strategy and released first-party games to competing platforms such as PS5. This strategy has indeed brought commercial success, and "Forza Horizon 5" and "Sea of Thieves" have performed well on the PlayStation platform. However, not all ported games can replicate this success, and the lack of console-exclusive games makes some players feel that the value of the Xbox brand has been diluted, reducing the need to buy an XSX|S console.
In response to outside concerns about the exclusive game strategy, Sharma made it clear that Microsoft will "make some decisions" on exclusive games, but will not sacrifice the quality of decisions in pursuit of speed. She emphasized that this topic involves complex trade-offs between macro strategy and individual games, and she avoided hasty conclusions.