Sales of games and additional content have nevertheless fallen by 3% and represent 2.8 billion dollars, but the number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers continues to increase and partially offsets the decline in game sales (both first party that third party) but also user engagement (time spent watching games).
Microsoft, however, benefited from an improvement in Xbox Series availability. Proof of this is that hardware sales amounted to 813 million dollars over the quarter against 710 million dollars a year earlier, an increase of 13% from one year to another. Microsoft mentions an increase in sales volume but also in the price of the machines, which seems to indicate a revival of form for the Xbox Series X.
The rest of the conference allowed CEO Satya Nadella to share some statistics, starting with the strong annual increase in PC Game Pass subscriptions (+159%) and the fact that 20 million people have tested Xbox Cloud Gaming. We also learn that the Xbox Series S is the gateway of choice into the Xbox ecosystem, because nearly half of the buyers of this model had never owned an Xbox before.
Microsoft as a whole achieved a turnover of 50 billion dollars (up 11%) and a net profit of 17.6 billion dollars (down 14%) in this first quarter alone. Note that Microsoft Cloud represents half of this amazing turnover.