The big boss of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, recently appeared in a Hard Fork podcast event in San Francisco, and he was questioned a little bit about the future of Xbox and what the plans are going forward.

Specifically, the first Xbox-related question was about Asha Sharma and Matt Booty's latest memo regarding the next 100 days of the business, and how they're essentially planning to "reset" and figure out new business models.

Nadella responded to this by highlighting the legacy of Xbox and gaming at Microsoft, but also "the challenge" of innovating in hardware and software in an "economically viable way".

Here's a bit more of what he said on this topic:

"We've invested a lot. Nobody can accuse Microsoft of not having invested for the last 25 years. And now, we have to turn this into a sustainable business that delivers what is fundamentally one of the best sources of entertainment still.

The challenge we have, is that we're not monetising that entertainment. In fact, if anything we've been subsidising that entertainment. In fact, there's more monetisation of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft. That doesn't mean we go do things that are unnatural — we want to do what is really our job, which is to build great games, build great hardware — but we've got to do it in an economically sustainable way."

The Microsoft CEO followed up by highlighting that Asha Sharma is using the next 100 days to take a fresh look at the business, as already stated in the aforementioned memo. He was then asked whether his comments mean that Xbox products could become more expensive going forward, which he addressed with the following response:

"I think we have to find ways to deliver the games in which it's economically relevant for the customer and for us."

He spoke a bit about the current problems around component shortages and rising prices for hardware, but also suggested that Xbox needs to figure out its long-term identity while navigating these challenges.

"The scarcity of the semi-conductor supply and memory in particular is having a massive impact on consumer electronics all-up. That's a temporal thing that I think we'll get through, it's not going to be permanent, but there is a permanent thing which is - "what's the Xbox model going forward?". And that's where, if you think about it, PCs and consoles both have their place, obviously mobile has people playing elsewhere, and so now we have to bring it all together while staying true to what we've always done."

If you fancy checking out what Nadella had to say in full, we've thrown the video from the podcast into the top of this article - he speaks about Xbox at the 4:36 mark, and only gets a couple of questions before moving on to other topics.

It's also worth mentioning that this interview was seemingly recorded before the rumour that suggested Microsoft had considered "spinning out or restructuring" the Xbox business, so this topic wasn't addressed in the discussion.

What's your take on Nadella's comments here? Let us know down below.