Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, appears at the Political Opening of the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany, on Aug. 23, 2023.
Franziska Krug | German Select | Getty Images
Microsoft is seeing “huge demand” for its new Starfield video game, Phil Spencer, the software company’s CEO of gaming, said on Wednesday.
“We think this game is going to be available to literally hundreds of millions of people on the devices that they already own, and looking to make this game as accessible as it can be to players,” Spencer told CNBC’s Steve Kovach.
The game, described as “the first new universe in 25 years” from Microsoft’s Bethesda Game Studios, appeared on Wednesday on PCs, Xbox consoles and other devices accessed through the cloud, for those who pay for the Game Pass subscription service. Microsoft picked up the game through its $8.1 billion acquisition of game publisher ZeniMax, the parent of Bethesda.
While Microsoft is aiming to make its games widely available, the company also wants to ensure that its consoles have some notable attractions as it competes with Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s Switch. Gaming accounts for 6% of Microsoft’s revenue, and Xbox content and services revenue grew 5% in the second quarter, faster than Windows, devices and some other parts of the company.
Gaming has taken center stage at Microsoft as the company tries to finalize the $68.7 billion acquisition of publisher Activision Blizzard, which makes Call of Duty and other franchises. The deal hit regulatory snags, but is still poised to close.
Starfield is an expansive open-world game with over 1,000 planets for players to explore as they build and buy spaceships. Before the acquisition, ZeniMax was planning to release the game on PlayStation, Jim Ryan, CEO of the Sony Interactive Entertainment business, said in a taped appearance at a hearing in San Francisco in June in connection the Microsoft-Activision deal.
Ryan said he wasn’t a fan of Starfield becoming a Microsoft exclusive, which would signify that it wouldn’t come to other consoles.
“We’ve had more players for any next-gen exclusive than we’ve had this generation all up,” Spencer said. He was referring to the current consoles, the $500 Xbox Series X and $300 Xbox Series S, which both went on sale in 2020. Those who bought premium editions of the game got early access last week.
Spencer said Starfield is the most wish-listed game the company has had on the Steam game store. On the review website Metacritic, Starfield currently has a score of 86 out of 100, based on 55 reviews from critics.
Spencer said tens of millions of Game Pass subscribers were getting a chance to play Starfield on Wednesday. As of January 2022, Microsoft said Game Pass had over 25 million subscribers.
Spencer stopped short of proclaiming that Starfield would debut on the PlayStation, but he is promising that some of Activision’s most popular titles will remain available on the PlayStation for years to come.
In July, Sony signed an agreement that would keep Call of Duty games on PlayStation for a decade. Microsoft has been working to resolve regulators’ concerns about the pending Activision acquisition by assuring it will keep games on Nintendo consoles, Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming offering and other services.
Microsoft announced plans for the Activision Blizzard transaction in January 2022. It was supposed to close by June 2023, but the companies said in July they had agreed to push back a deadline to complete the deal to Oct. 18.
In August, Microsoft submitted a new proposal to the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority that would involve transferring to game publisher Ubisoft the cloud streaming rights to Activision’s PC and console games for 15 years if the deal closes.
But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.
A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.
“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank,Tan Su Shan told CNBC.
“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
China rolls back curbs on rare earths. Beijing said Friday that it would suspend some restrictions on exports of rare earth elements. The move follows talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Oct. 30.
Nexperia impasse shows signs of easing. The Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement Sunday that it had taken steps to allow exports of certain chips from Nexperia’s China facility. Shares of Nexperia parent Wingtech Technology climbed Monday.
U.S. government on track to end shutdown. The Senate on Sunday night stateside passed the first stage of a deal that would end the shutdown. The procedural measure allows other votes essential to the agreement to be held starting on Monday.
[PRO] Chinese sectors benefiting from AI. Earnings season in the country is underway, and while it’s spotlighting some AI-related sectors that have seen growth of up to 57%, others are facing a decline because of fierce price competition.
Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.
An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.
China has rolled back a number of restrictions on its export of critical minerals and rare earth materials to the United States, in a sign that a trade truce between the world’s two largest economies is holding.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said Friday that it would suspend some export controls on critical minerals used in military hardware, semiconductors and other high-tech industries for a year.
The suspended restrictions, first imposed on Oct. 9, include limits on the export of certain rare earth elements, lithium battery materials, and processing technologies.
The export relaxations follow talks between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on Oct. 30.
Beijing also reversed retaliatory curbs on exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other so-called super-hard materials such as synthetic diamonds and boron nitrides. Those measures, introduced in December 2024, were widely seen as retaliation for Washington’s expanded semiconductor export restrictions on China.
China classifies such materials as “dual-use items,” meaning they can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Beyond military applications, these critical minerals are used across the semiconductor industry and other high-tech sectors — sectors at the heart of U.S.-China trade tensions.
Beijing has also suspended the stricter end-user and end-use verification checks for exports of dual-use graphite to the U.S., which were imposed in December 2024 alongside the broader export ban.
China dominates global production of most critical minerals and rare earth elements and has increasingly used its export policies as leverage in trade disputes.
As part of the latest China-U.S. trade deal, the U.S. has agreed to several concessions, including lowering tariffs on Chinese imports by 10 percentage points, and suspending Trump’s heightened “reciprocal tariffs” on Chinese imports until Nov. 10, 2026.
The U.S. will also postpone a rule announced Sept. 29 that would have blacklisted majority-owned subsidiaries of Chinese companies on its entity list.
But the first full trading week of the month saw stocks caught in November rains.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each lost more than 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed around 3% — that’s its largest weekly loss since the tech-heavy index slumped 10% in the week ended April 4.
A few months ago, tariffs were the shadows that stalked stocks. Now, it’s fears that artificial intelligence-related stocks are trading at prices disconnected from what the firms are actually worth.
“You’ve got trillions of dollars tied up in seven stocks, for example. So, it’s inevitable, with that kind of concentration, that there will be a worry about, ‘You know, when will this bubble burst?‘” CEO of DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank,Tan Su Shan told CNBC.
“It’s likely there’ll be a 10 to 20% drawdown in equity markets sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” Solomon said Tuesday at the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
That said, a pullback isn’t necessarily bad for stocks. It could even present “buying opportunities” for investors, according to Glen Smith, chief investment officer at GDS Wealth Management.
After all, earnings have been “reassuring” despite worries about tech stocks’ high valuations, Kiran Ganesh, multi-asset strategist at UBS, told CNBC. That means the rain might not last and the rally could find a way to run a little longer.
— CNBC’s Lee Ying Shan, Hugh Leask and Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
China consumer prices pick up in October. The consumer price index, released Sunday, showed a 0.2% growth year on year. It beats analysts’ expectations of zero growth and is the first month since June that prices rose.
U.S. government on track to end shutdown. Enough Democratic senators had agreed to vote for a deal that would fund the U.S. government through the end of January, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC.
Another missed jobs report. The ongoing U.S. government shutdown — which is now the longest ever — means the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t release its monthly employment data. Here’s what economists would have expected the report to show.
[PRO] Stocks that could bounce after sell-off. Using CNBC Pro’s stock screener tool, we found several names that are oversold, according to their 14-day relative strength index. This implies they could be due for a recovery in prices.
Fundraisers and fraudsters are presenting themselves as family office representatives, seeking to dupe gullible investors — and then there are also imposters who are in it just for an “ego boost,” several industry veterans told CNBC.
An information vacuum seems to have encouraged imposters. In many markets, genuine single family offices, or SFOs, are exempt from registering so long as they manage only family money. That privacy norm often makes verification hard, said industry experts.