Xbox CFO Says Xbox Console Audience Isn’t “Growing That Fast”; MS Wants to Drive High-Margin Sales on PlayStation & Nintendo

wccftech.com:

Microsoft has once again reiterated that the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King was mostly about securing a foothold in the mobile market.

The highly-debuted megadeal between Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard-King was finally completed last month. After having announced the merger in January of 2022, the deal became a rather long journey with plenty of discussions, regulator blockings, court hearings, and whatnot.

While many have argued that the purchase was about obtaining IP, Xbox head Phil Spencer has also said that the main reason for the deal was about mobile gaming. Yesterday, at the Wells Fargo TMT Summit Conference, Xbox Chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart once again talked about Microsoft's primary reason to buy Activision-Blizzard-King, thereby also confirming that the Xbox console audience isn't growing that fast. Obviously with Candy Crush, but also with Call of Duty Mobile, Activision-Blizzard-King knows what they're doing when it comes to mobile games. "Yes. Mobile is -- the most gamers in the world play on mobile", the CFO said during the conference. "We think about the console landscape and part of the real evolution of the deal was, hey, look, we've got a fixed console audience with Xbox or relatively fixed, but not growing that fast. You've got a couple of hundred million kind of console addressable market. You've got 300 million or 400 million kind of in that PC gamer market, and then you have billions in the mobile market."

During the conference, the Xbox CFO also talked about making Call of Duty a high-margin first-party business instead of a lower-margin third-party business for Microsoft, in which Stuart also mentioned driving high-margin sales on rival platforms, including PlayStation and