Matthew Ball knows mobile has the most players and revenue – but he’s got to fix Xbox’s console business first

New Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball says his first task is to rescue its console business – so growing Microsoft’s presence in mobile and PC will have to come later.

Speaking at The Game Business Live earlier today, Ball explained the fundamentals of the market as he sees it, and why despite that his first job is to concentrate on restoring the Xbox console business to be a real contender against PlayStation.

“The reality is most players and most revenue is on mobile,” he said. “Second to that, we have the most hours and the most players on PC, but less revenue than mobile. Console is a 40 to $45 billion business, is it growing as fast as PC or mobile? No. Are there as many hours? No.”

“Is my bet that that platform is substantially larger tomorrow, or in ’28 or in ’29 than it is today? No…but we are still talking about hundreds of millions of players who spend 40 plus billion per year in a category that they love, that I love, and more importantly, that is durable and valuable and important to us. We have no desire to move away from console business.”

“What is important is that we restore that business before we look beyond to those other platforms. Do we need to get better at PC? Yes. Do we need to get better at mobile? Yes.”

“At the same time, we can’t ask publishers, partners, and especially players to bet on us on other platforms where we are behind, where our technology is inadequate before we shore up the platform we have, the platform that many believe we’ve mistreated.”

Returning to the point later, Ball doubled down on the idea that it is legacy console players who he is most focused on catering to, despite the larger potential outside of that business in not just mobile but PC, too.

“Those people that we asked to buy a console years ago, we still have an obligation to meet their expectations and to have them feel rewarded for which platform they chose,” he added. “Many of them play across multiple platforms, and that’s awesome, but whether or not they do or don’t, we have to do well by them.”

“That’s where we’re starting, and the more and more success we have in that offering allows us to then invest across the rest of the ecosystem…but for us to get elsewhere, grow on mobile, grow on PC, we need to convince customers in the markets where we don’t have sufficient supply on shelf you should play on Xbox or PC, as opposed to the alternatives.”

You can read more about Ball’s approach to Xbox game exclusivity and even how the RAM crisis could cause Xbox to rethink its next console in our report for The Game Business.