Commissar SFLUFAN Posted April 26 Share Posted April 26 Call of Duty and Diablo boost Microsoft's gaming revenues, but Xbox sales continue to fall WWW.GAMESINDUSTRY.BIZ Microsoft has released its latest financial results, showing significant growth in gaming revenues — thanks in no small… Quote Microsoft has released its latest financial results, showing significant growth in gaming revenues — thanks in no small part to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. However, Xbox hardware sales continue to decline and saw the steepest drop since the Xbox Series X and S launched in 2020, down 31% year-on-year. The company's overall revenues were up 17% to $61.9 billion, primarily due to growth in Microsoft Cloud which saw revenues rise 23% to $35.1 billion. Quote For the three months ended March 31, 2024: Gaming revenue: Up 51% year-on-year Xbox content and services revenue: Up 62% Xbox hardware revenue: Down 31% However, if the ABK acquisition is excluded from the quarterly data, the picture becomes a lot starker. As per Daniel Ahmad: Quote The elephant in the room here is that if you exclude Activision Blizzard from this quarter, Xbox Gaming revenue is down ~5% YoY with no software & services growth and sharp hardware revenue decline. In other words, you can see why Microsoft sees M&A as essential for growth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodger Posted April 26 Share Posted April 26 Seeing how well Fallout is doing thanks to the show and how well Sea of Thieves appears to be doing on pre orders, I highly expect them to be a fully multiplatform publisher very soon. Maybe with some kind of timed exclusivity for the Xbox first but if we see Starfield on PS5 around the end of the year or beginning of 2025 that's the sign the floodgates will open. They really don't even have a choice as I would argue the XSX is a superior console to the PS5 in just about every way outside of the part that counts, exclusive games. So launching some mega console first just isn't going to matter. Then they run into the problem of because of where they are, most third party devs and pubs will just wait for the PS6 anyway. Even if they do some sort of handheld hybrid thing, the Switch and surely Switch 2 will just shrug it right off since the Steam Deck and others haven't put any dent in Switch sales. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crispy4000 Posted April 27 Share Posted April 27 2 hours ago, Dodger said: They really don't even have a choice as I would argue the XSX is a superior console to the PS5 in just about every way outside of the part that counts, exclusive games. So launching some mega console first just isn't going to matter. Then they run into the problem of because of where they are, most third party devs and pubs will just wait for the PS6 anyway. Couple counterpoints to this: The 360 went first and it ended up working out fine for Microsoft. The games industry fought the idea of generational shifts hard this time with an extended cross-gen period. I don’t expect that to change going forward. Instead we’d see an Xbox Next use graphical options designed for PC builds. And it’s indies who are having a harder time justifying Xbox ports. Not the EA, Ubisofts and such. Things are still far from Wii U bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodger Posted April 27 Share Posted April 27 10 minutes ago, crispy4000 said: Couple counterpoints to this: The 360 went first and it ended up working out fine for Microsoft. The games industry fought the idea of generational shifts hard this time with an extended cross-gen period. I don’t expect that to change going forward. Instead we’d see an Xbox Next use graphical options designed for PC builds. And it’s indies who are having a harder time justifying Xbox ports. Not the EA, Ubisofts and such. Things are still far from Wii U bad. 360 had success because the PS3 was peak arrogant Sony. $599 get a second job price point, lack of first party support early, and the complicated cell architecture made basically every third party game run better on 360. Also back then, Xbox Live was way better than PSN. They already have the more powerful arguably better overall hardware and it hasn’t made a difference. Games Pass hasn’t made a difference in console sales either. There have been signs of arrogant Sony this gen but it will take a colossal fuck up at this point, or something really amazing on the console front for MS to have another 360 gen. Also at this point this the 4th gen of MS consoles and the 360 is the only one that had tremendous success. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crispy4000 Posted April 27 Share Posted April 27 42 minutes ago, Dodger said: 360 had success because the PS3 was peak arrogant Sony. $599 get a second job price point, lack of first party support early, and the complicated cell architecture made basically every third party game run better on 360. Also back then, Xbox Live was way better than PSN. None of that was known when the 360 launched. Microsoft got in front, it would have paid off regardless. 42 minutes ago, Dodger said: They already have the more powerful arguably better overall hardware and it hasn’t made a difference. Games Pass hasn’t made a difference in console sales either. There have been signs of arrogant Sony this gen but it will take a colossal fuck up at this point, or something really amazing on the console front for MS to have another 360 gen. Also at this point this the 4th gen of MS consoles and the 360 is the only one that had tremendous success. I don’t think another 360 gen would come easy, but they could do it if they leveraged their assets in a meaningful way in a launch year. Come out swinging, instead of deflated. It sets the narrative. It could also be argued that their new multiplatform push would make people hesitant to buy their machine regardless. So they’re sort of keeping themselves in this position. Games Pass and Series S were both great illustrations that the value play doesn’t drive hardware sales. They focused on the wrong things. And their one big software bet, Halo Infinite, generated a bunch of question marks with a delay instead of earnest hype. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperSpreader Posted April 27 Share Posted April 27 360 succeeded because of COD becoming popular on it Sony started buying COD exclusivity PS4 days and the downtrend started for Microsoft Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spawn_of_Apathy Posted April 29 Share Posted April 29 On 4/26/2024 at 7:55 PM, SuperSpreader said: 360 succeeded because of COD becoming popular on it Sony started buying COD exclusivity PS4 days and the downtrend started for Microsoft Uncle Phil wasn’t as cut throat as his predecessor and didn’t like the practice of buying exclusives or exclusive content. I guess Sony thought MS would just allow Playstation to keep buying the premium game industry out from under them until Xbox was dissolved. So congrats Sony, you awoke a $2T company to take the video game industry serious again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbsolutSurgen Posted April 29 Share Posted April 29 On 4/26/2024 at 8:22 PM, Dodger said: 360 had success because the PS3 was peak arrogant Sony. $599 get a second job price point, lack of first party support early, and the complicated cell architecture made basically every third party game run better on 360. Also back then, Xbox Live was way better than PSN. This. X360 largely did well in the anglosphere, and a huge part of that was the popularization of online shooters and the ability to talk with your friends (in English) online. That was REALLY slow coming to PS3. When the price of PS3 came down, and PSN got better -- Sony's sales recovered. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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