It’s 11:50 p.m., and Fifth Avenue is dark on a cold October Monday in Manhattan. The only signs of life come from a new addition to the neighborhood: Microsoft’s flagship retail outlet opened that morning, and now loud music and lights spill out from inside. Pedestrians peer through the glass at several hundred excited customers celebrating with a handful of actors in high-tech battle armor.
Midnight on Oct. 27 was the launch of Halo 5: Guardians, and people around the world lined up to buy the newest release in the blockbuster sci-fi video game franchise.Microsoft MSFT +0.00% owns and publishes the Halo series for its Xbox game consoles, and when its CEO sees a product launch like that, he gets excited. “I want people to move from using to needing to loving Windows, and that is something that I think Xbox is built around,” said Satya Nadella in an interview at the E3 video game convention in June–the first time in eight years a Microsoft CEO has attended the industry’s biggest event. “The fans, the engagement… those are the things that I want to have translated to other parts of the company.”
