Microsoft wanted to SHUT DOWN XBOX?!

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Some choice quotes from the article including a titbit about how Satya Nadella was considering shuttering #Xbox in 2021 👀

“In 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella faced a choice involving the company’s Xbox and cloud gaming business. The company could either acquire major game studios to drive more subscriptions to its nascent Game Pass subscription service. Or it could wind down its games business entirely, Nadella told two people at the time.

Nadella took the first path, acquiring Elder Scrolls maker Bethesda Studios for $7 billion in 2021 and Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard for $75.4 billion in the fall of 2023.”

““[Activision] has been disappointing,” said Denny Fish, a Janus Henderson Investors portfolio manager who oversees two funds that included a total of more than $800 million in Microsoft stock as of November.”

“I just think the majority of the game market doesn’t really want a game pass” like the one Microsoft is offering, said Gus Zinn, a portfolio manager of the Macquarie Science and Technology Fund”

“Several leading game studios have resisted Microsoft’s pitch that they should put their titles on Game Pass in exchange for fees that Microsoft offers to pay to the gaming studios, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“Microsoft also hoped the Activision deal would attract game developers to rent its Azure cloud servers. But Activision wasn’t using Azure prior to the deal, and it still rents servers from Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services while primarily relying on its own servers for development, according to someone with direct knowledge of the situation and another person briefed on it.”

“Before completing the Activision acquisition, Microsoft targeted having over 100 million Game Pass subscribers by 2030, meaning it would have to triple its current subscriber base in five years—or grow at a rate of 40% annually, which would be faster than its rate of growth every year since 2020.”

“Also removed late last year from their reporting processes, was reference to Game Pass growth as one of the metrics that determined CEO Satya Nadella’s pay package.

This came after Microsoft failed to deliver Game Pass growth targets in the prior two years.”

source