'This is the year to get an Xbox," Microsoft exec says
"We've had probably the best year we've ever had for Xbox."
2015 will probably go down as the best year on record for the Xbox business. That's according to Microsoft marketing executive Yusuf Mehdi, who talked more about Microsoft's efforts in the gaming space this week as part of a presentation at the Credit Suisse Technology Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.
"Gaming has been a pretty big success case," he said (via DualShockers). "Gaming you think about in two pieces. There's a traditional Xbox console business, where we compete with Sony. And there we've had probably the best year we've ever had for Xbox. And it's on the back of the greatest games lineup in Xbox history. So if you like to game, this is the year to get an Xbox. We have Halo 5 launching. We have Minecraft on Xbox. We have Gears of War, Tomb Raider. The best lineup; next year will also be the best lineup. That's led to really a great success on it."
Before this, Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg hyped up the Xbox One's holiday games lineup by saying, "If you're a gamer, you've never really seen a holiday lineup like this before."
Another part of Microsoft's gaming efforts is extending the Xbox "value proposition" to PC with the Windows 10 Xbox app and streaming capabilities, among other things.
"So we have an Xbox app that ships with Windows 10 that lets you see your social graph of Xbox while you're not on your PC," Mehdi explained. "You can now stream Xbox games from your console straight to your Pc. So if your family is in the living room watching a movie, you can be quietly in the office playing Halo and being very productive. So you've got that. That's a very powerful capability."
Mehdi also called out Xbox Live, the network that powers Microsoft's gaming efforts, as another area of success for Microsoft. He said there are "almost the same number" of Xbox Live monthly users on Windows as there are on console. Not all Xbox Live users have subscriptions to Xbox Live Gold, but there is an opportunity to bring more players into the fold.
"The ability to build a subscription business on the back of that now, you can start to see some light for that opportunity," Mehdi said about getting PC users to convert to paid subscriptions.
By Microsoft's latest count, Xbox Live had 39 million active users. Going forward, Microsoft will focus more on Xbox Live usership figures instead of console shipment numbers when announcing Xbox results.