Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella considers Windows the biggest gaming business, and wants to make sure games are being enjoyed by players everywhere.
During an interview with TBPN, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reflected on the company’s evolving approach to gaming, clarifying that Windows remains the largest gaming platform in the world, and that Microsoft’s mission is to make gaming accessible and enjoyable on every possible device. “Remember the biggest gaming business is the Windows business,” Nadella explained, pointing to the operating system’s deep roots in PC gaming culture and its role in the rise of platforms like Steam. “To us, gaming on Windows, and of course Steam, has built a massive marketplace on top of it and done a very successful job of it.”
Following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Nadella noted that the company is now the world’s largest game publisher, and that this status comes with a responsibility to ensure players can enjoy games on consoles, PCs, mobile devices, and even through the cloud. “We want to be everywhere, in every platform,” he said. “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 games are being enjoyed by gamers everywhere.”
Nadella also discussed his view on consoles, describing them not as competitors to PCs, but as part of the same technological continuum. “It’s kind of funny that you know people think about the console [and] PC as two different things,” he stated. “We built the console because we wanted to build a better PC which could then perform for gaming.”
Looking ahead, Nadella said Microsoft is focused on driving innovation both in hardware performance and in the business model of interactive entertainment. According to him, the true competition of games isn’t other games but short-form video content that dominates the attention of audiences. “Gaming’s competition is short-form video,” he claimed. “[We] as an industry [need to] continue to innovate [in] how we produce, what we produce, [and] how we think about distribution [and] the economic model. The best way to innovate is to have good margins because that’s the way you can fund.”
For Nadella, ensuring the health of gaming means balancing creative innovation with sustainable economics. “The best way to innovate is to have good margins,” he said. “That’s how you can keep funding new ideas.”
