Microsoft’s 2018 Holiday Advert is everything that’s great about today’s Microsoft

Sometimes I feel so pleased and proud to be aligned to Microsoft technologies. ?

Microsoft have just released a Holiday 2018 advert. It doesn’t say anything about technology, or products, or features, or even the cloud. Instead, it talks about Owen (aged 9½), and a special controller for Xbox which has changed how he games.

This controller (the Xbox Adaptive Controller) is unlikely to be the peripheral that makes Microsoft their next billion dollars, but it’s going to change people’s lives.

Just to be clear: I’m not a gamer, I don’t own a Xbox  and so I’m unlikely to be purchasing this anytime soon. But, the fact that Microsoft would spend the time and resources to bring this to market, just so they could make people’s lives better, nicely highlights the direction Microsoft has been heading in over the past few years.

It takes big companies like Microsoft to put in the effort to level the playing field and do work for the common good, not just for profit. We’ve seen Microsoft embrace their corporate responsibility in this area and this isn’t the only example of such a commitment to diversity and inclusion. But, it’s a pretty amazing one, and even though I have nothing to do with Xbox, I’m pleased and proud to be aligned to Microsoft technologies, because I think they are leading in the area of corporately “doing the right thing”.

There are 4 videos in the playlist – the other 3 cover why Microsoft made the Adaptive controller, as well as a behind the scenes video and an unboxing.

Written by Tom Morgan

Tom is a Microsoft Teams Platform developer and Microsoft MVP who has been blogging for over a decade. Find out more.

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