This is a deep dive into Sarah Bond, a relative outsider. But now in what's a massive gaming company or ARM, she's really important. What is she trying to do? Sarah Bond is trying to move the Xbox business beyond the Xbox console. Head of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, says that they've been selling consoles to the same 200 million global households, and they really want Xbox to mean more than the plastic box in your living room. Sarah Bond's mandate is to expand Xbox games into phones, into next-generation hardware. Sure. But also, you know, potentially handheld, which is something that she and her boss have sort of teased that your story is so fascinating because you go into the relationship between her and her boss, how they turned to H.R. to really ensure that they can communicate more efficiently, but also her history. T-Mobile, what is she going to bring to the table? Yeah, Sarah Bond's history from T-Mobile.

really gives Microsoft expertise that was lacking in the mobile world, in the mobile gaming world in particular. So at T-Mobile, she's someone who knows a lot about subscriptions, a lot about how to keep people coming back to a product, and also how to trim subscriptions in a way where users don't feel bloated by extra services they don't need. And Microsoft has a sort of Netflix for games service called the Game Pass that has 34 million subscribers. Probably more at this point because that data is old. And Sarah Bond is hoping to reach gamers who want sort of a subscription product using Game Pass, which will be available on phones, on PCs, on tablets, on Xbox, on smart TVs, whatever you have. Xbox hopes to be there. Cecilia, really quick. A big impetus for the Activision deal was mobile gaming, and I'm yet to see the story that what is it? It's a little challenging. So when Microsoft announced the deal with Activision Mobile was the fastest

growing segment of the games industry. Now, global consumer spending on mobile games dropped 2% in 2023. It's still, you know, an over $100 billion industry. But, you know, PC gaming is actually the fastest-growing sector of the games industry this year, according to one recent study. So, it's going to be a little challenging for Sarah to kind of make good on the Activision acquisition. And at the same time, you know, she has high hopes because so many people have mobile phones.

Xbox’s President Lays the Groundwork for Next Console

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