Satya Nadella just waded into the Xbox conversation and did not speak like the usual gamer-exec PR answer. In a recent appearance on a tech show, Nadella said Xbox intends for its games to be playable “everywhere, on every platform,” and he dropped another line that leans toward the idea of the next Xbox being closer to a PC than past boxes: “We built the console because we wanted to build a better PC.”
That phrasing matters because it comes from the top of Microsoft, not only Phil Spencer or Xbox leadership. Nadella tied gaming back to Windows and the wider PC market, noting the company now sits among the most prominent publishers after the Activision deal and wants its titles to reach as many players as possible.
“We’re going to be everywhere, on every platform,” he said, listing consoles, PC, mobile, cloud gaming, and TV as places Microsoft wants its games to be enjoyed. The comment is another public nudge in the same general direction recent Xbox executives have sketched out – a premium next-gen device that blurs the line between console and PC, and a platform strategy that favors reach over exclusivity.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was just on the online tech show TBPN and provided one of the longer answers about his views of the game business that I've seen- Wants to put their games on everything, a la Office- Wants to revisit console/PC paradigm- "best way to innovate is to have good margins"
— Stephen Totilo (@stephentotilo.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T19:25:35.368Z
We already flagged Microsoft’s ongoing hardware interest in a previous piece about the company’s active investment in future Xbox consoles, and Nadella’s remarks sit neatly on top of that reporting. At the same time, other Xbox leaders have been explicit about treating competition as broader than just PlayStation and Switch, which feeds into why Microsoft might push for Xbox experiences to land everywhere.
Taken together, Nadella’s comment that the console was built to be “a better PC” reads less like a throwaway line and more like a design philosophy. If the next Xbox uses that as a North Star, expect a focus on PC-style flexibility and compatibility rather than a pure black-box console approach.
There are still open questions. How will any hybrid hardware be priced, and how will it sit alongside existing Xbox and PC ecosystems? Will Xbox-first games remain exclusives or continue moving to other platforms? These are the things to watch as Microsoft talks more about hardware strategy in the months ahead.
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