One thing is certain, the video game turnover for the period October – December 2022 shows 4.76 billion dollars, a drop of 13% compared to the same quarter a year earlier. The comparison is indeed difficult as the fall of 2021 still overdoes the pandemic effect and saw the release of several major titles such as Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5 and Age of Empires 4. In detail, the “content and services” segment has fell 12% due to lower home game sales and a decline in monetization of big third-party titles. A drop partly offset by the number of Xbox Game Pass subscriptions which continues to rise. However, Microsoft has not released figures since the 25 million subscribers announced in January 2022.
Microsoft claims 120 million active gamers
Only, if the drop in income from games was expected, that of console sales was less so. The results of the “hardware” segment are however down 13% despite the availability of the Xbox Series S, a machine on which Microsoft has largely insisted in its communication. At this stage of the cycle, this is obviously not a good result, even if it should be noted that these figures remain above what Microsoft did during previous generations. At the conference, CEO Satya Nadella was still satisfied with the number of monthly active users, which reached a record number of 120 million at the end of 2022. In other words, according to Microsoft’s calculations, its ecosystem video game (consoles, PC, mobile, Game Pass) would now reach more people than that of Sony and Nintendo (just over 100 million each, according to the latest figures).
“In games, we continue our ambition to give gamers more choice to play great games where, when and how they want. We hit new highs for Game Pass subscriptions, game streaming hours, and monthly active devices, while monthly active users surpassed an all-time high of 120 million in the quarterSatya Nadella commented. Overall, Microsoft posted revenue of $52.7 billion and net profit of $16.4 billion, the latter of which fell for the first time in a long time. Recall that after having hired heavily to respond to the effects of the pandemic, Microsoft began the year by laying off some 10,000 employees, including some at Xbox and Bethesda, to deal with economic uncertainty and certain changes in priorities, especially in the field of artificial intelligence.
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