well, thanks so much for joining us today,
Phil I'm really excited to delve into all things gaming.
So
in october Xbox said it would have to raise prices,
but now you're offering discounts on selected gaming bundles.
So walk me through the decision and why you guys decided to reverse it
and when we talked about in october was more
just looking at the macro trends in the environment,
what's going on and kind of a longer term vision view of what might happen at the time,
We did make it clear that we weren't gonna be raising price this holiday.
We love the fact that we have an affordable product on the shelf with Xbox series.
S right now,
I think that combined with Game Pass is a great value
for families in a time where they can really use it,
you know, that's a really good point.
You mentioned families and inflation is definitely a concern this time of year.
How do you think that will affect your sales this holiday season?
You know,
I say over and over gaming is clearly a luxury activity
were not the things that families have to first and foremost,
take care of your family, food, shelter, those kind of things.
But I will say we find and we've done some research
in this area that gaming is something that brings families together
over half the parents that we talk to say that they
love to bring the their childhood gaming memories to their family,
to their kids play with their kids.
Um it's I think a good value for money when you think about the time that
you can spend together and playing and what that actually cost you to go play.
So families have a lot that they're balancing this time of year.
I think gaming can be a great activity for them.
But obviously families have to make the decisions that are right for them
now.
I'm glad you mentioned those parents because
there was a study earlier this year that
I was looking at and it said that more adults play video games than kids.
So what does this mean for the future of Microsoft gaming?
I think a lot of people think about gaming as a kids activity,
but now you're finding people like myself,
I'm in my fifties and I've been playing my video video
games my whole life that just as videos came in,
video games came in in the seventies, people who are kids in the seventies grow up,
they like to share those memories with their family,
they stay connected with their friends.
There are three billion people on the planet that play video games.
So clearly it's not one demographics, not one age demographic really,
gaming is for everybody.
And as an industry,
I think it's our job to make our our art
form as accessible to as many people as possible.
And I love that. We're really doing that right now
now, you're in the middle of the Activision acquisition.
So how is this a game changer for your company and what's the latest status on it?
Yeah, we're working through regulatory when we announced the deal.
But in january, we said by the end of what is our this fiscal year, which ends in june,
we always kind of viewed this as an 18
month activity when we were doing our internal planning.
It's a big deal. It's a big deal. That's important.
I expect regulators to look at this to the
full extent Phase Two kind of asking their questions,
all of the things that frankly they should be
doing as regulators and looking at these big deals.
Um, I remain very Confident in where we are for us in our business.
The thing that really attracted us to activision Blizzard
King was the capability they have in mobile.
Mobile is the largest platform where people play.
We've been doing our own organic work with
things like Minecraft to build mobile engagement,
but they just have an amazing set of mobile
properties that can really help us accelerate our business.
I want to talk about a couple divisions you have,
so you have Microsoft game pass which accounts for 15% of your revenue.
So, are there any future plans for expansion of that to get more customers?
Overall gaming is growing And that's the thing that we focus on this year.
You've seen in a lot of the industry numbers?
I think we're basically flat as an industry maybe a little
down coming off of some year over year comparisons with Covid.
But if you look at the overall combined growth rate over 345 year period, you see,
Graeme gaming remains a durable activity, consumers love it.
They spend where they love.
And our our business continues to grow as we look at where we're trying to go.
It's about bringing more access
to more players in more different ways.
We think we have a great proposition for gamers there.
And as an industry, we just kind of continue to focus on making gaming accessible,
making it safe and making it a place where communities love to play.
Speaking of more access,
I know you recently added a games for work app
and they have some favorites like Mind sweeper and Solitaire.
Now I can see this can appeal to the casual gamer,
but how are you trying to attract those
people who might usually be on Microsoft teams?
I love the question, you know,
it's finding players where they hang out where they are is important for us.
And you mentioned teams, you know, sitting in a teams call,
which I definitely do many hours in the day and having the
opportunity to have a diversion right there inside of the team experience.
It's all about finding more players allowing players to find new games,
whether it's selling consoles, like the s and at a lower price.
We're seeing over half of our new Xbox customers coming through there.
Our console customers, putting games and teams doing things like X Cloud,
allowing players to stream games to the devices that they own.
It is really about allowing people to play the games
that they want to play where they want to play them
Well. That's thanks to Microsoft Gaming ceo Phil spencer.