At some point soon, Bond will also have to make decisions about the thing that got Microsoft into gaming in the first place. In January, rumors circulated among Xbox gamers that there would never be a new version of the console.
There’s reason to question whether Microsoft would want to build another Xbox. Console makers cannot count on profiting from hardware sales alone—Spencer said in 2022 that Microsoft loses between $100 and $200 per sale. The company has also cut back on its ambitions to build other hardware such as its Hololens headsets and mobile devices.
Yet Bond has said there will be a new Xbox, and that the next generation of the console will feature “the largest technical leap you will have ever seen.” And then there’s the flirtation with the idea of launching a handheld gaming device. The company has made no commitment about this, though Spencer says he tasked Bond with building a “more diverse” hardware future for Microsoft. He has taken every opportunity to say he loves portable gaming devices and says the company would just have to come up with something different from what’s already on the market.
Diving into the multiyear project of building a new console could seem like Microsoft backsliding into the model it hired Bond to break out of, even before it’s figured out how to make money from its new hybrid business of subscriptions and smartphone gaming. But she talks about a handheld device as another way to insert an Xbox-specific experience into the lives of future gamers whose habits have yet to be formed. For Xbox to succeed, she says, it has to meet gamers wherever they are. “I want people to think no matter who you are, you can come to Xbox and find a game,” she says. “It’s for you.”
—With Jason Schreier
www.bloomberg.com
