The fact that sales volumes of current generation game consoles are declining could be judged by at least yesterday’s AMD report. Microsoft’s quarterly reporting only confirmed this trend, since the corporation’s revenue from the sale of Xbox family hardware solutions decreased by 29% over the past period. But revenue from the sale of games and related services increased by 61%.
Image source: xbox.com
As Microsoft notes, of this increase, approximately 53 percentage points were provided by the effect of the Activision acquisition. Overall, the company’s gaming revenue grew by 43%, and in this case, the entire increase is explained by the influence of the deal mentioned. Microsoft’s revenue from sales of Xbox game consoles and accessories fell by 29% year-on-year. In total, in the More Personal Computing segment, which includes gaming solutions, Microsoft earned $13.2 billion in the third quarter, which is 17% more than the result of the same period of the previous year.
In the past quarter, Microsoft introduced a “standard” tariff plan for access to the Xbox Game Pass service and raised the cost of access to the Ultimate tariff. The game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III has also become available to customers of the service. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, this was the largest game release in history for the Call of Duty franchise. In general, the faster growth rates of Microsoft’s revenue from the sale of games compared to consoles indicate that the company adheres to the tactic of distributing them on a variety of platforms, and not just on its own consoles.