Ed Fries left a sought-after position on the Microsoft Office team in 1996 to take on his first big managerial role overseeing the company’s games. But most gamers, and even Microsoft’s employees, never took the business seriously then.
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It developed a series of children’s games on CD-Rom based on the Magic School Bus books and a very popular version of Solitaire in the 90s. Microsoft was making computer games as far back as 1982, when it put out the original Flight Simulator on floppy disk. That hasn’t always been the case, and we know we will have work to do.”
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“We also know that PC gamers and console gamers can have different needs and expectations, and it’s important for us to be as good at PC as we are at console. “If we’re going to connect with a global gaming audience, that means meeting them where they like to play,” said Matt Booty, the head of Microsoft’s game studios who approved Loftis’s original pitch. Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer, has already plopped down $10 billion for games-related acquisitions and added Phil Spencer, the head of gaming, to his senior leadership team in 2017. Loftis’s pitch in 2016 fit squarely in the company’s expansionist vision for gaming. It’s a priority for the company. “In fact, it’s actually a fairly significant number of people.” “There are some of us who never stopped playing Age,” Loftis said.
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The Japanese company has said it’s working on bringing several PlayStation titles to the PC, and a few months ago, it acquired a Dutch outfit called Nixxes Software that specializes in doing just that.īut console thinking doesn’t exactly translate to a PC, said Loftis, a 26-year veteran of Microsoft’s games division who has been seen around the office wearing a T-shirt that reads, “Think Outside the Xbox.” Age of Empires IV and Flight Simulator were built specifically for the keyboard-and-mouse crowd and play to their sense of nostalgia. is laying plans to emulate Microsoft’s strategy, said George Jijiashvili, an analyst at Omdia. Three months ago, the company put out a version for the Xbox Series X to similar acclaim. It was rated the third-best PC game of 2020, according to Metacritic.
Last year, Microsoft released a new Flight Simulator, the first in 14 years. Some of the most popular Xbox games started on the computer, like Minecraft and PUBG: Battlegrounds.
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The company is repackaging many of its console games for purchase on Steam, the most popular PC game store, and has shifted from console sales as a driver of sales to focus on its subscription services that work across PC, consoles and mobile devices. They drive customer demand for high-end Windows computers and are drawing more players to Microsoft’s broader game empire. PC games are valuable to Microsoft in other ways, too. Although the console market is more lucrative, the PC has a dedicated fan base and is a key game platform in places where the Xbox isn’t strong, like in China and South Korea. There are 1.4 billion people worldwide who play games on computers, according to research firm Newzoo. Now, though, it’s reinvesting in the hope of attracting a population of gamers that exceeds that of consoles. The original Age of Empires helped demonstrate Microsoft’s ambitions in PC games, but the company’s commitment to the medium has wavered over the decades. “We’ve got to speak to PC gamers as well.” “I said, ‘Hey, you know this console thing, it seems like it’s been OK, but if we really want to speak to gamers, we’ve got to go beyond console,’” Loftis, 56, recalled. Leading the project is Shannon Loftis, who secured the job five years ago after she told her bosses it was time for Microsoft to take computer games more seriously. As Loftis tells it, she “begged” to oversee work on rebooting Age of Empires, a franchise that dates back to the 1990s.Īlthough the Xbox and related content account for most of Microsoft’s $15 billion in annual game revenue, Loftis saw an opportunity.