If you were an international megacorp that had just emerged into the light, dripping from head to toe in gore after a wave of layoffs that saw over 2,500 people lose their livelihoods following a $69 billion acquisition, what would your first move be?
If you answered ‘start eyeing up more acquisitions,’ then congratulations, you’ve got the makings of a CEO in you. In a recent chat with Bloomberg, Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer got bullish about Xbox’s health, declaring that “The Xbox business has never been more healthy,” even as it transitions from a plain-Jane console maker to a multiplatform dev giant. “The business is performing right now, and I think that means a more healthy future for hardware and the games we build,” said Spencer. Hardware like a gaming handheld, perhaps?
But old Phil is after “geographic diversity” in Microsoft’s gaming moves. That means he’s got his eyes open for more potential acquisitions even as Microsoft is still digesting the absolutely enormous bite that was its purchase of Activision Blizzard last year.
In particular, Microsoft is after any big buys that would let it compete better in the battlefields of mobile and handheld: “We definitely want to be in the market,” he said, and if Microsoft can nab people, tech, and companies “that add to what we’re trying to do in gaming at Microsoft, absolutely we will keep our heads up.” He stresses there’s nothing “imminent,” though. Please refrain from dropping your life savings into mobile game stocks.
Which is, of course, exactly the kind of thing that enormous corporations do and say all the time. It’s how they stay alive. But I can’t help but feel like it sure would stick in my craw a bit to see Microsoft execs talking up how incredibly amazing the corp is doing and all the big, expensive moves it’s set to make if I were one of the literally thousands of people who had lost my job at the company.
Perhaps that’s why I’m not an executive. Either way, it still sounds like Spencer has big ideas about what he wants Xbox to be even after a tumultuous couple of years. That means expanding into mobile games, cloud gaming, and putting more once-upon-a-time exclusives on PlayStation—”I do not see sort of red lines in our portfolio that say ‘thou must not [put more games on PlayStation].'”
So Spencer has a spring in his step and stars in his eyes, and it’s anybody’s guess just how Microsoft’s big moves in branching out between the same old humdrum console game will play out. “I feel pretty good about where this industry is going,” he told Bloomberg. I wonder if those 2,500+ ex-employees feel the same.
