Microsoft released its financials for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2023, confirming a record number of monthly Xbox players while also disclosing some outstanding revenue data. While Microsoft announced in June that Xbox had lost the console wars, these fresh financial insights show that the company’s gaming segment is nonetheless growing steadily.
The large technology company has been minimizing the significance of its Xbox division throughout this year in order to finalize the merger with Activision Blizzard. As part of this campaign, Microsoft recently released sales figures for the Xbox Series X/S, which is a departure from their previous practice of not sharing such information for almost ten years.
While the Xbox company’s newly released financials did not provide a comparably extensive breakdown of its console sales, they did provide new insights into the company’s gaming segment, which recently had its second-best fourth quarter on record.
Microsoft’s gaming division generated around $3.49 billion in sales over the three months ending August 8, a $36 million rise year on year.
The 1% increase was attributable to new third-party game releases and Xbox Game Pass, which saw a 22% increase in quarterly hours played. Overall, Xbox reached new heights in terms of fourth-quarter monthly active users, according to Microsoft, without providing a specific figure.
Despite a 13% decline in hardware revenue during the same period, the corporation managed a 1% increase in quarterly gaming turnover. However, considering that Xbox CEO Phil Spencer recently stated that he isn’t concerned about console sales, this reduction is unlikely to prompt any major changes at Microsoft. According to DomsPlaying, an industry expert on Twitter, the conglomerate’s entire gaming income for the full fiscal year was $15.47 billion, a $760 million decline from the pandemic-promoted 2022.
Microsoft’s slight quarterly gaming increase managed to offset some of the declines in its personal computing division’s growth margin, the difference between revenue and direct costs, which fell by 2% ($124 million) over the observed period. It also assisted the company in increasing its operating income by $186 million, a 4% improvement over the last quarter of its fiscal year 2022.
Microsoft has expressed its enthusiasm for Xbox Game Pass Core, a recently revealed successor for Xbox Live Gold. The company anticipates that the upcoming service will increase console subscriptions by significantly increasing the value proposition of Xbox Live Gold, as well as providing users with a more meaningful glimpse at some of the more expensive Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier’s perks, such as its massive content library and frequent member discounts.
Also read: BGMI Redeem codes to try in the game
