You may have noticed that
Xbox boss Phil Spencer is throwing around Microsoft’s hefty wallet.
The company has made a number of acquisitions over the last year to shore up its first-party game development. And Spencer explained that he earned the right to do that because Microsoft’s executive team is more interested in gaming than ever.
Spencer was on stage today for a discussion at the Barclays Global Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco. And he explained that Microsoft’s gaming division generated more than $10 billion in revenue for the first time during its 2018 fiscal year. Gaming ended that 12-month period as 9.4 percent of Microsoft’s total revenue. And surpassing that threshold turned some heads inside Microsoft.
Amy Hood, our CFO, she likes to tell me I’ve made ‘the spreadsheet,'” Spencer said during a fireside chat (
via CNBC). “So she’s going to pay attention.”
Attention means money
Of course, Microsoft has had a gaming division since the Xbox debuted in 2001. But it has operated in something of its own silo until Spencer joined Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella’s executive team in 2017. Quickly after getting that promotion, Spencer began flexing his muscles as the leader of a core pillar of Microsoft’s business.