
Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia, appears to be lobbying hard to get the top job at Microsoft, or at least talking loudly enough about what he'd do if he gets the top job that makes me think he's not the right person for the position.
Xbox is making money for Microsoft. It has nothing to do with Office or the enterprise, which really is a good thing because it gives the company diversity outside of its historic core moneymakers. Further, of the consumer big three of Apple, Google, and Microsoft, only Microsoft has a footprint into the living room by virtue of being connected to the TV for games. The next generation Xbox One is designed to overlay onto existing TV and cable TV connections, allowing it to intermediate TV watching with the ability to inject Skype calling and add voice control for the selection of TV shows

Jason Dietz: "We reveal the past year's best and worst video game publishers (based on their 2025 releases) in the 16th edition of our annual Game Publisher Rankings."
But... but... the garbage-mongers always tell us that Square Enix is in trouble! 😂

Microsoft has lost another two long-serving members of its senior team: corporate VP of partnerships, business development, and marketing, Lori Wright, and general manager of gaming AI at Xbox, Haiyan Zhang. Both announced their departures on LinkedIn.
they've definitely worked there for too long. their responses are "me me me me" shit.
no sane person talks like that.

Indie studio Speculative Agency - which is currently making "a narrative courtroom deck-builder about ordinary people who make the powerful pay for destroying our future", called All Will Rise (quote from Kickstarter) - has made the brave decision to return funding given by Xbox and Microsoft to join the No Games For Genocide boycott.
Oh good lord. Could Eurogamer wear their politics more overtly on their sleeve? While I disagree with Speculative Agency's decision the article by Eurogamer is painful. It's not a news article, its a propaganda opinion piece. Consider the language used:
*"Brave decision to return funding" -- A proper article would have said 'made the decision' or 'made the difficult decision'. Saying 'brave' editorializes in a way that isn't appropriate for news article.
*"All Will Rise narrative director Meghna Jayanth - renowned for her work on Inkle's 80 Days and, more recently, the genre-mash-up skateboarding dating game Thirsty Suitors" -- The writer is significantly exaggerating the relevance of this person. They are not renowned. I'm a former game journalist who is obsessed with game development and indie games and I vaguely remember those games as minor blips and nothing of real note. The narrative director is definitely not a well known name (something required to be 'renowned').
*The article provides no critical thought or counterpoint, nothing to to push back the idea that Microsoft is contributing to genocide. In fact the opposite, it accepts the statement as truth and then links to a video to educate their uninformed viewers about the evil of Microsoft. (Of course, Eurogamer has accepted significant funds from Microsoft)
Imminent
People at Microsoft are smarter than that, the Xbox division is making money for them and it is their last chance for the dominion of the living room. they will never sell the Xbox division.
Elop is a decent leader, but nowhere near good enough to lead a huge company like microsoft.
It was primarily because of him and his inability to react to the smartphone market that Nokia fell so much over the past few years. Honestly, I don't think he'll be chosen as a ceo.
And bing has just begun to gain traction (the online division is actually making profits for microsoft now) and the xbox business is microsoft's major push into the living room, so I don't think anyone at microsoft would want to let the two services go. They've invested too much into them to simply kill them off or sell them off.
It isn't like the Windows OS is becoming more popular and it's not like Microsoft would be more popular if they got rid of Bing and Xbox. If anything, those are both some of the last remaining things I can positively associate with Microsoft. To let either of those go would be a setback for them, I say this even for Bing mainly because of its integration into most of their products.
"Xbox is making money for them"...isn't it also losing a lot of money for them? Investors don't give a shit if your product is bringing in a billion dollars a year if you are losing twice that much supporting it.