Microsoft has published its quarterly financial details which naturally includes a whole lotta numbers spanning the company’s vast empire. Buried in there is details on how Xbox is performing, and it seems Game Pass has seen a sizable surge of growth.
Game Pass apparently brought in more cash this past quarter than it has in any previous quarter. The result is that “Xbox content and services revenue increased 2%, ahead of expectations driven by stronger-than-expected performance in Blizzard and Activision content, including Call of Duty.”
It did particularly well on PC where the service saw a 30% rise in subscribers.
While it was not specifically mentioned, it’s likely that this surge in subscribers was down to the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 which launched straight onto Game Pass at the end of 2024.
Indeed, it was confirmed that Black Ops 6 was the top-selling Xbox and PlayStation game for the last quarter.
“Black Ops 6 was the top-selling game on Xbox and PlayStation this quarter – and saw more players in its launch quarter than any other paid release in franchise history.” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.
Unfortunately, while there was an apparent boost in subscribers, Microsoft still won’t share any specific numbers, making it very hard to gauge how well the service is really doing.
Looking toward the future, Microsoft is predicted gaming revenue growth to be in the low single digits, while Xbox “content and services” is expected to be in the “low to mid-single digits driven by first-party content as well as Xbox Game Pass.”
And unsurprisingly, Xbox hardware sales are down again and are expected to continue declining. That’s to be expected, of course, but Xbox’s hardware sales are falling more rapidly than PlayStation’s.
The next few years are going to be fascinating to watch as Xbox seems to finally be making its messaging clear: Xbox games are coming to other platforms. Even Starfield seemingly isn’t safe, at least according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer.
And then there’s the strong hints that Xbox intends on competing in the handheld space as well, potentially with its own hardware.
According to Ampere, an analyst group, Microsoft’s gaming related earnings last month overtook EA, making Microsoft the biggest game publisher in the world. Of course, Black Ops 6 will have played a massive role in that. EA also faced some problems as the company admitted to both Dragon Age: Vanguard and FC 25 underperforming.
Funnily enough, 64% of the money spent on Microsoft games was apparently on PlayStation. What a crazy time we live in, eh?