Nadella said they're not making hardware for the same reason Apple is, they make it it to showcase Windows and create things other manufacturers can follow.
What does that even mean? I'm sure Apple would say the same, if you replaced "Windows" with "Apple stuff." If anything, it sounds like he's saying he wants MS to be
more like Apple building their own hardware to put their best foot forward. Is he saying he wants Dell to start making Surfaces too or something? What exactly are MS doing differently from Apple here?
That's why the hardware division is within the Windows division and not the other way around.
I don't think either is within either at Apple, but I'm not sure. I get the feeling that hardware and software are handled mostly separately though.
At Apple I'm fairly certain the device design takes priority because that's where most of their revenue comes from.
Pretty sure Apple know the software is at least as important as the hardware if not more so, because it's the software that causes people to choose the hardware. Apple's hardware is very nice, to be sure, but it's generally not the very best, at least when it comes to specs and such. The software is the main attraction, and Apple have always known this; keynotes have always been mostly software-focused, and oh, one more thing, we refreshed the hardware again so it's faster again.
At MS most of their revenue comes from software and services. The comparison makes no sense.
Comparing Surface to iPad makes far more sense than comparing Surface to XBox, and you're the one who brought up Surface in the first place. ;p
Nadella's whole vision is about your experiences (and all the MS services you pay for) going with you across every screen in your life and the TV is still a major screen. He's acknowledged that gaming is the biggest life (non-business) category in terms of time spent and revenue, so they've got to have something there to get those MS accounts and Windows Store users.
C'mon now. You know full well he was talking explicitly about mobile when he talked about how important gaming was and how the XBox brand may be useful to them going forward. Let's not go putting words in to the man's mouth. He wasn't reaffirming a commitment to consoles, he was saying he thought these game devs may help him gain some traction in the very important
mobile space, where Surface sits, speaking of.