Gaming

Activision Blizzard continues to boost Microsoft’s gaming revenue, but hardware sales continue to decline

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Microsoft has presented the financial results belonging to the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, which ended on September 30, and once again the company has shown that it does not stop in its efforts to make money. To the joy of shareholders, over the last three months the technology company has earned $65.6 billion and obtained a profit of $24.7 billion, which represents an increase of 16% and 11%, respectively, compared to the same period of the previous year.

During the last quarter, Microsoft’s gaming division recorded a year-on-year increase in revenue of 43%, a growth that is entirely attributed to the purchase of Activision Blizzard, a company for which it paid $68.7 billion a year ago. Xbox content and services revenue grew 61% compared to a year ago, and in this case the impact of the Activision Blizzard acquisition is 53 points. These figures contrast with those of hardware, whose sales fall again and suffer a year-on-year decline of 29%.

It is difficult to assess the importance that the sale of Xbox consoles has for Microsoft. The company continues to launch new Xbox Series models and has been working on next-generation hardware for some time, but it also strives to promote solutions that allow access to its games and services without having to buy the console. The arrival of Game Pass Ultimate on Amazon’s Fire TV devices is an example of this, while Xbox Cloud Gaming will expand its features sooner rather than later.

Last quarter, Microsoft increased the price of Game Pass and launched the Standard plan, but that was at the end of September and it is difficult to assess its impact in such a short time.

In the rest of Microsoft’s divisions everything is going smoothly. Where there is more current is in the Intelligent Cloud division, which thanks to the endless momentum of Azure registers revenues of 24.1 billion dollars, 20% more than a year ago. The cloud supported by AI is the business that is growing the most, but the division that contributes the most to the cash is Productivity and Business Processes, which thanks to Microsoft 365, Linkedin and Dynamics business applications manages to bring in 28.3 billion dollars, an increase 12% year-on-year.

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