Microsoft revealed its quarterly earnings results last night, giving us a good idea as to how well Xbox is doing right now to start off the new console generation. Microsoft unfortunately doesn't reveal specific sales numbers, but everything appears to be on the up, with the gaming division generating $15 billion in revenue over the last year.
Gaming revenue for Microsoft has risen by 50 percent year-on-year, thanks in part to the new Xbox Series X/S consoles, as well as growth from services like Game Pass. In the last quarter alone (January 2021 to March 2021), Xbox brought in $3.53 billion for Microsoft. For the entire fiscal year, gaming revenue rose to $15 billion, which is up from $10.3 billion in the previous year.
As reported by industry analyst, Daniel Ahmad, Xbox content and services revenue rose by 34 percent year-on-year, which was driven by strong third-party releases on Xbox, the growth of Xbox Game Pass and first-party game sales. Those first-party game sales now include Bethesda's entire catalogue, as Microsoft closed its acquisition of Zenimax Media in early March.
Finally, Xbox hardware sales rose by 232 percent year-on-year due to the Xbox Series X/S launch. Specific sales numbers were not revealed, but Microsoft will have sold several million units at this point. Unfortunately, due to supply constraints, Microsoft is expecting to see a slight decline in Xbox revenues in the third quarter.
Of course, Microsoft has many divisions bringing in revenue and doesn't rely on Xbox all that much. As a whole, Microsoft brought in $41.7 billion in revenue, with a profit of $15.5 billion.
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KitGuru Says: Microsoft's gaming strategy is clearly paying off and we'll likely see another big jump in late 2021, thanks to first-party game releases like Halo Infinite.