IT giant Microsoft is dissatisfied with gaming sales for January-March. They were lower than expected. This was announced by Amy Hood, CFO of the corporation.
On April 24, Microsoft published the results of its third fiscal quarter. The quarter fell on the calendar January-March of this year. Against the background of a generally prosperous situation for the company, the gaming segment does not look the best in general. Its growth rates are among the lowest compared to other segments of the company.
The company’s gaming revenue grew by only 5% year-on-year. Moreover, the main growth came from the sale of software and services for Xbox, which increased by 12%. In just one quarter, the company’s gaming business earned $2.3 billion.
Dynamics of Microsoft segments
Microsoft’s CFO explained a similar situation during the conference call with lower-than-expected sales of games from third-party developers, as well as sales of consoles themselves that did not correspond to the inflated forecast.
And in the next quarter, according to Amy Hood’s forecast, the situation will only get worse. The CFO expects that the results of April-June of this year will be less than those of a year earlier.
The main positive news for Microsoft’s gaming division is the growth of active Xbox Live subscribers. There were 4 million more of them — 63 million people.
Despite the problems, according to the company’s CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft continues to actively invest in content, community and cloud technologies to realize its capabilities in the gaming market.
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