🔥 Microsoft has one of the most powerful mobile gaming businesses on the planet.
Most people just don't realise it...
The Breakdown...
Microsoft Gaming generated $1.7bn in mobile IAP last year
King alone: $1.3bn. The ninth-biggest mobile publisher on earth
Candy Crush Saga by itself: $1bn in 2025
That's not a side business but more like a mobile empire
New CEO Asha Sharma now oversees all of it: King, Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, Mojang Studios.
The conversation in the industry this week has been about Xbox, console strategy, and what Microsoft does next.
But I think the more interesting question is mobile
King has quietly built one of the stickiest, most monetised casual audiences in the world
Candy Crush has been in the top-grossing charts for over a decade 🤯
The retention mechanics, the live ops, the casual-to-payer conversion...King wrote the playbook
For the new leadership team, that's not a legacy business to manage but rather a foundation to build on
Mobile is where Microsoft's next chapter gets written, if they choose to write it.