So yesterday I was prepping for the podcast and a friend called me with some gaming news. He directed me to an article that claimed investors wanted Microsoft to axe the XBox division. It sounded unbelievable, so I went to view the article myself. After looking around, I found the source article. Now I’ll admit the article doesn’t paint as grim a picture as I expected, but it’s worth talking about anyway. The article can be read here.

So to summarize for those who don’t feel like reading it, investors want MS to get rid of all non essential product lines and focus on selling enterprise software. The main targets were the Windows division (shrinking profits and a 900 million loss on unsold Surface tablets) and the online services division (oversees Bing, lost 1.3 billion.) However, the key quote from the article is as follows.

“Even the Xbox deserves to go, Paul Ghaffari, the wealth manager for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, said last year.”

EVEN THE XBOX DESERVES TO GO? WTF? When the man who manages Paul Allen’s money makes a suggestion, it has to hold some weight. But I can’t imagine Microsoft would actually go through with this. I just don’t want to imagine a world where my only options are Sony or a reeling Nintendo.

I understand that the gaming division doesn’t bring in a crap load of money. But it was actually profitable for a few years in a row before the XBox One launch. I guess just being profitable isn’t enough over there, it seems to be all or nothing in investors eyes. Apparently their vision of Microsoft’s future differs greatly than the former leadership. With Satya Nadella at the helm, no one quite knows what to expect going forward. Enough pressure from stockholders could actually make him push to make this happen. Let’s hope for the XBox division to remain untouched.