FTC Director James Weingarten showed Spencer the slide below and asked him if he agreed with predictions that the number of Game Pass subscribers will exceed 100 million in the period 2028-2030, mainly due to the growth of the PC market and of the cloud.
Spencer said without hesitation that Microsoft could leave the video game market if the information in this slide came true. Microsoft needs the light green and blue segments (PC and cloud) to get much bigger, much faster, by FY2027, or it could exit the market entirely.
I don’t believe that would be the market picture for Xbox. This is a presentation from our device organization to the gaming leadership team, so this is the view from the team behind our hardware on what our future market position will look like.
I can say with confidence that if we don’t make more progress than this outside of console, we will be out of the video game market. If this was the result – I believe we would not have a position in the market.
I hope that no earlier than 2030 the majority of our customers will come from our own hardware. So when you asked me if I agree with this chart that the light green and blue depending on the colors you see, they should be much bigger much earlier. I would say by fiscal ’26, ’27 we should be in that position or we’ll have to make a different business decision.
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