Microsoft has been on the warpath recently, especially when it comes to acquiring game studios. With the company buying or getting the rights to seven game development studios in the past two years, Microsoft wants to buy more.
Recently, the company released a "forward-looking statement" for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2020, and in it they had an entire section dedicated to gaming. It has been included below:
Gaming
Our gaming platform is designed to provide a variety of entertainment through a unique combination of content, community, and cloud. Our exclusive game content is created through Xbox Game Studios, a collection of first-party studios creating iconic and differentiated gaming experiences. We continue to invest in new gaming studios and content to expand our IP roadmap and leverage new content creators. These unique gaming experiences are the cornerstone of Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service and gaming community with access to a curated library of over 100 first- and third-party console and PC titles.
The gamer remains at the heart of the Xbox ecosystem. We continue to open new opportunities for gamers to engage both on- and off-console with both the launch of Project xCloud, our game streaming service, and continued investment in gaming hardware. Project xCloud utilizes Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology to allow direct and on-demand streaming of games to PCs, consoles, and mobile devices, enabling gamers to take their favorites games with them and play on the device most convenient to them. Project xCloud will provide players with more choice over how and where they play.
Xbox Live enables people to connect and share online gaming experiences and is accessible on Xbox consoles, Windows-enabled devices, and other devices. Xbox Live is designed to benefit users by providing access to a network of certified applications and services and to benefit our developer and partner ecosystems by providing access to a large customer base. Xbox revenue is mainly affected by subscriptions and sales of first- and third-party content, as well as advertising. Growth of our Gaming business is determined by the overall active user base through Xbox enabled content, availability of games, providing exclusive game content that gamers seek, the computational power and reliability of the devices used to access our content and services, and the ability to create new experiences through first-party content creators.
That's definitely a lot to digest. Perhaps the most interesting is their indication that they have continued to "invest in new gaming studios and content to expand our IP roadmap and leverage new content creators." With Halo Infinite delayed until next year, Microsoft's ace in the hole now more than ever will be what other Xbox Game Studios bring to the table, and a console can never have too much exclusive content. If there aren't any games worth playing, then people will be disinclined to buy the console, which means less subscriptions, which are the bread and butter that Xbox has been bringing in.
Either way, it looks like we'll be seeing some more announcements in the coming few years. Until then, stay tuned to TechRaptor.
What studios do you think Microsoft has been trying to acquire? Are there any studios you want to see under Microsoft's umbrella? Let us know in the comments!
