Microsoft reaffirms commitment to gaming on Xbox

Despite there being rumors to the contrary after the Xbox One saw Sony’s PS4 pull quickly ahead in first year sales, Microsoft is committed to gaming and the Xbox brand.   Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft,  has addressed these concerns in a recent memo to the company’s employees.

Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox

“As a large company, I think it’s critical to define the core, but it’s important to make smart choices on other businesses in which we can have fundamental impact and success,” says Nadella. “The single biggest digital life category, measured in both time and money spent, in a mobile-first world is gaming. We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation. Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox.”

Nadella also states that the technological advancements that push the gaming business forward for Xbox have impact on other aspects of their business as well.

“We also benefit from many technologies flowing from our gaming efforts into our productivity efforts – core graphics and NUI in Windows, speech recognition in Skype, camera technology in Kinect for Windows, Azure cloud enhancements for GPU simulation and many more,” says the CEO. “Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft.”

It’s not a huge shock that Microsoft is committed to the Xbox brand.  Though with so many rumors arriving in the last year, it’s nice to hear Nadella vocalize the level of value that he places on gaming from one of the technology industry’s biggest players.