Just in case you thought Microsoft was going to start letting the Xbox One platform that it's pumped billions of dollars and over a decade of work into stagnate, company CEO Satya Nadella wants to clarify something.
"Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox," Nadella wrote in a lengthy memo published earlier July 10 on Microsoft.com.
Phew. The communiqué, titled "Bold Ambition & Our Core," outlines Microsoft's plans for fiscal year 2015 and beyond, including Nadella's vision of "a mobile-first and cloud-first world."
But who cares about that when there are video games to play?
Right to the core
Nadella addresses the future of Xbox in a section called "Our Core," but he seems to view it outside of the core of Microsoft's business - "productivity and platforms," specifically.
"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," he wrote.
Perhaps more importantly, Nadella points out that Microsoft's actual core businesses benefit from innovation on the Xbox front, from improved speech recognition in Skype to enhancements to the Azure cloud for Xbox GPU simulation.
"Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft," he concluded.
