“This really does align much more with what they’re doing,” said Rod Breslau, a former ESPN reporter who now covers esports and video games as a consultant. “If you try to compare how the TikTok deal ended up with Oracle with how Microsoft ended up here, this is way better of an approach.”
Carolina Milanesi, a technology analyst for the research firm Creative Strategies, said that people “thought Microsoft was crazy when they invested in Minecraft” for $2.5 billion in 2014, “but that turned out to return both on revenue and brand awareness among Gen Zers.”
Microsoft, which will release its Xbox Series X on Nov. 10, has long trailed Sony in total console sales — Sony has produced the three best-selling individual home consoles in the original PlayStation released in 1994, the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 4. To better compete, Microsoft has highlighted the…
