Activision Blizzard boosts Xbox revenue results again as hardware sales plummet…

It’s happened again: Activision Blizzard gave Microsoft’s gaming division a boost, according to its latest financial results. Even though Xbox hardware sales have dropped significantly.

In the three months ended June 30, game revenue increased by 44% compared to the same period last year, Microsoft said on Tuesday. This includes the net effect of Activision by 48 points. Without the acquisition, gaming revenue would have decreased by 4%.

On the other hand, Xbox hardware revenue fell by 42% compared to the same period last year. However, Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Xbox Game Pass, grew 61% this quarter. Again, most of this (58 points of net impact) came from Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during a conference call after the earnings announcement that his gaming division already has more than 500 million monthly active users on various platforms and devices.

“Our content pipeline has never been stronger,” he said.

“We previewed a record 30 new titles at our showcase this quarter. 18 of them, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, will be available on Game Pass.”

“Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now stream games directly on devices they already have, including as of last month, Amazon Fire TVs. Finally, we are bringing our IP to new audiences.”

“Fallout made its debut as a TV show on Amazon Prime this quarter. It was the second most watched show on the platform ever, and hours played on Game Pass for Fallout increased nearly 5 times.”

Earlier this month, Microsoft raised the prices of Xbox Game Pass and announced plans to introduce a new Standard subscription tier that excludes day one releases.

Modern Warfare 3 became the first Call of Duty game to join the subscription service, while Black Ops 6 will be the first Call of Duty title to do the same on launch day when it launches on October 25, 2024.

The first Activision Blizzard game to be included in Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service was Diablo IV on March 28.

According to the latest sales data from the market research company Circana, the Xbox Series consoles are 13% behind where the Xbox One was during the same period of its life cycle in the US market.

Source: CNBC, VentureBeat