At the Citi Global Technology Conference earlier today, Microsoft’s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela spoke about Microsoft’s long-term goals with Windows 10 and how the Xbox One fits into them.
Capossela explained, “Success for us, we’ve said with Windows 10, in two years we want to have a billion Windows 10 active devices, connected to Windows 10, using Windows 10 on a regular basis. That gives you a little bit of a sense that for us, of course we care about revenue, profit, share, but we also care about usage. Fundamentally, we have to be more focused on how many people are using our stuff everyday, and how happy they are using our stuff. And if we get a lot of very happy people, then the revenue, the profit, the share, we think that will follow, we think lots of good things will happen. So a core power metric for us is Windows 10 devices.”
He continued, “That’s not a PC statement. That will be phones, that will be tablets, that will be laptops, that will be desktops, that will be big surface hubs, that will be Xboxes. Xboxes today run Windows, and so every time we sell an Xbox we’re actually creating a Windows active device that hopefully people love it, it’s their gaming device, in their living room. It is not a separate animal. It is literally a Windows device.”
The Xbox currently runs a version of Windows, but not Windows 10. According to Xbox Boss Phil Spencer, the Windows 10 update for Xbox One should be delivered to the gaming consoles sometime “post-summer.”
If Microsoft truly can put a billion Windows 10 devices in people’s lives within the next two years, it will be interesting to see the transformation of the the Windows ecosystem and the Xbox One’s evolution within it. One billion devices sure is a lofty goal, but after Microsoft confirmed that Windows 10 was installed in over 75 million computers within the first month of release earlier this year, they’re definitely on the right track.