‘We Continue to Extend Our Games to New Platforms’

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has shared his annual letter, which was published in the company’s 2024 report, via LinkedIn. In the letter, Nadella discusses every major focus area for Microsoft: AI, security, business applications, professional social network (LinkedIn), search/ads/news, and gaming.

On this subject, the Microsoft CEO chose to highlight how the gaming side of the company has begun expanding its content (which now also includes all of Activision Blizzard King’s franchises) on many more devices, and he seemed to hint that this trend will continue in the future.

We are bringing great games to more people on more devices. With our acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, which closed October 2023, we’ve added hundreds of millions of players to our ecosystem. We now have 20 franchises that have generated over $1 billion in lifetime revenue—from Candy Crush, Diablo, and Halo, to Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, and Gears of War. And with Xbox cloud gaming, we continue to innovate to offer players more ways to experience the games they love—where, when, and how they want. Finally, we brought four of our fan-favorite titles to Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation for the first time, as we continue to extend our content to new platforms.

Nadella is, of course, referring to the big tectonic shift in Xbox’s strategy that happened in February when Microsoft decided to bring four games to PlayStation 5 and/or Nintendo Switch: Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, Grounded, and Hi-Fi Rush. At the time, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told fans that the…