So Satya Nadella is very optimistic, and he has nothing to be ashamed of, because despite the huge cuts at Microsoft, he gets paid much more than before…

Nadella published his annual letter on LinkedIn where he talked about several topics. On the gaming side, he talked about how they are expanding their content to more devices (this now includes Activision Blizzard King) and he sees this trend continuing. He also talked about the multiplatform strategy (which the Redmond-based company launched in February and mentioned in yesterday’s news):

“We’re bringing great games to more people on more devices. With our acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, which closed in October, we’ve added hundreds of millions of players to our ecosystem. We now have 20 franchises that have generated over $1 billion in lifetime revenue – from Candy Crush, Diablo, and Halo to Warcraft, Elder Scrolls, and Gears of War. And with Xbox Cloud Gaming, we continue to innovate to give gamers more ways to experience the games they love-where, when, and how they want.

Finally, we brought four of our fan-favorite titles to Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation for the first time as we continue to expand our content to new platforms. If it were up to me, I would like to get rid of console exclusivity. But that’s not up to me, especially as a small player in the console market. The dominant player there [Sony] has defined market competition through exclusivity, so that’s the world we live in. I have no love for that world,” Nadella wrote.

Bloomberg reported that Microsoft’s CEO could take home 63% more than his pay package last year. The CEO will get 90% of that in Microsoft stock, which amounts to about $79.1 million, and that would have been $5 million more if he had not taken a pay cut at his own request for “personal responsibility” for the company’s past cybersecurity problems. Microsoft President Brad Smith admitted the cybersecurity failures to the US Congress. The Redmond company also admitted that it was hacked in November 2023 by a “Russian state-sponsored actor” known as Midnight Blizzard, which affected a small percentage of the company’s email accounts. These breaches have led the company to pledge to overhaul its cybersecurity procedures, including the creation of six priority security pillars that will guide the company in strengthening its security practices going forward.

This year alone, some 2,550 people have been laid off from Microsoft, and four studios closed in May (Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Games). And yet it wasn’t just Sadella who took home more money, but also Amy Hood (the finance chief got a 30% jump to a $25.8 million package) and Smith (+29%, $23.4 million)…

Source: WCCFTech, PCGamer, Bloomberg