Microsoft CEO Sataya Nadella has released a statement that confirms Microsoft’s commitment to Xbox which all but denies rumors and speculation of the tech giant selling off its gaming division.

Microsoft has released a memo to all of their employees from Nadella which lays out the CEO’s vision for Microsoft: a vision that includes gaming.

“As a large company, I think it’s critical to define the core, but it’s important to make smart choices on other businesses in which we can have fundamental impact and success,” Nadella said. “The single biggest digital life category, measured in both time and money spent, in a mobile-first world is gaming. We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation. Microsoft will continue to vigorously innovate and delight gamers with Xbox.”

Nadella continues acknowledging Xbox as a consumer brand and added that innovations in Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division has led to technological advances in other Microsoft products.

“We also benefit from many technologies flowing from our gaming efforts into our productivity efforts – core graphics and NUI in Windows, speech recognition in Skype, camera technology in Kinect for Windows, Azure cloud enhancements for GPU simulation and many more. Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft.”

My Opinion:

The rumors and speculation of Microsoft selling off its Xbox division seemed outlandish to me in the first place, so it is good to see Microsoft’s CEO standing up and reaffirm the company’s commitment to gaming.

Follow Andrew Lee on Facebook as he continues his never-ending quest to keep playing.