Despite the high-profile release of Gears 5, in general, July-September was not the best way for Microsoft’s gaming division. It lost in sales in annual terms.
Yesterday, on October 23, the results for the first fiscal quarter of 2020 of Microsoft Corporation became publicly available. This time it fell on the calendar third quarter of 2019.
According to published data, Microsoft earned $2.54 billion in July-September. This is $196 million less than the company earned over the same period a year earlier (a drop of 7%).
Dynamics of Microsoft gaming sales (first quarters only, 2015-2020)
We are talking about earnings from the sale of Xbox, the sale of console and PC games, microtransactions in Xbox Live, subscriptions, payment for cloud services, advertising and royalties from third-party teams.
The main factor in the fall Microsoft calls a 34% reduction in sales of Xbox consoles. As market analyst Daniel Ahmad notes, this is not surprising, because the time of the current generation of consoles is coming to an end.
At the same time, sales of games and services remained at the same level, according to Microsoft. This is good news, because this year sales of Fortnite and other games with IAP were lower,” Ahmad reports.
Perhaps a big role in maintaining the previous positions was played by the release of Gears 5, which turned out to be one of the largest releases of Xbox Games Studios in the history of the current generation of consoles. 3 million people played Gears 5 on the first weekend.
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