Microsoft has reported that its Xbox content and services division saw a 61 per cent increase in revenue for the three months ending June 30th.
In its release to investors, the company reported that its subscription and software arm had seen a 61 per cent increase in revenue in no small part due to Activision’s help. That company contributed 58 per cent of this growth. Microsoft told investors that its first-party line-up boasted a “stronger-than-expected-performance” that helped offset its third-party business.
Hardware continues to disappoint for Xbox; this was down 42 per cent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the company claims that it has over 500 million monthly active users across its games platform.
Speaking to investors, CEO Satya Nadella was asked about the company’s investment in games, including its acquisition of Activision Blizzard
“For us, our investment in gaming fundamentally was to have, I would say, the right portfolio of both what we love about gaming and always have loved about gaming, which is Xbox and the content for the console and expand from there so that we have content for everywhere people play games, starting with the PC,” Nadella said.
“So when I think about the Activision portfolio, it comes with great assets for us to cover both the PC and the console. And then, of course, assets to cover mobile markets, which we never have. So we feel that now we have both the content and the ability to access all the traditional high scale platforms where people play games, which is the console, PC and mobile.
“But we’re also excited about these new markets, right? I mean the fact that even in this last quarter, we expanded X Cloud to Amazon TV, I forget the name of what it’s called. But that’s the type of new access that really helps us a lot, get reach new gamers or the same gamer everywhere they want to play. And that ultimately will show up in that software plus services and transaction revenue for us, which is really our long-term KPI, and that’s what we’re building towards. And that was strategy behind Activision as an asset. Amy, if you want to add to it?”
