We all know it's been a difficult year for Xbox at times in 2024, especially considering a bunch of people have been laid off along the way - and therefore a lot of industry folk are highlighting Satya Nadella's recently revealed pay bonus.
Nadella, who is the boss at Microsoft, took home a base salary of $2.5 million in 2022 and 2023, and that hasn't changed for 2024. What has changed is that he's generated over $70 million in stock awards, which ultimately represents a successful year for Microsoft as a whole - and a stock price that's risen heavily over the past 12 months.
Here's a bit of what Nadella had to say in the company's recent Annual Report for this year:
"Fiscal year 2024 was a pivotal year for Microsoft. We entered our 50th year as a company and the second year of the AI platform shift. With these milestones, I’ve found myself reflecting on how Microsoft has remained a consequential company decade after decade in an industry with no franchise value."
"Financially, the year was also marked by record performance. We delivered over $245 billion in annual revenue, up 16 percent year-over-year, and over $109 billion in operating income, up 24 percent."
The result is a pay package that totals $79 million for Nadella, which is a 63% increase on last year. This is actually after the Microsoft boss took a voluntary $5m "cash incentive" pay cut following a recent cybersecurity threat.
In terms of the "headlines" that we've mentioned, there have been a bunch of them - the likes of Eurogamer and IGN have been highlighting the Xbox layoffs as part of their coverage, and that's no surprise. Regardless of how Nadella got his increase, it still stings from an Xbox perspective following a series of job losses at various studios in 2024.
As part of that Annual Report we mentioned earlier, Nadella highlighted Xbox's Activision Blizzard acquisition, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and the PlayStation / Nintendo ports as some of the successes for the division over the past 12 months.