Activision Blizzard again boosted Xbox’s earning results, while hardware declined

Activision Blizzard again helped drive Microsoft’s gaming division in its latest financial results, despite a significant decline in Xbox hardware sales.

For the three months ended June 30, 2024, gaming revenue was up 44% year-over-year, Microsoft said on Tuesday, which includes 48 points of net impact from Activision. Without the acquisition, gaming revenue would have been down 4 percent.

Xbox hardware revenue declined 42% year-over-year, but Xbox content and services revenue, which includes Xbox Game Pass, was up by 61 percent this quarter. Again, the majority of this (58 points of net impact) came from Activision Blizzard.

Speaking during a web call following its earnings release, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella claimed its gaming division now has over 500 million monthly active users across platforms and devices.

“Our content pipeline has never been stronger,” he said. “We previewed a record 30 new titles at our showcase this quarter. 18 of them, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, will be available on Game Pass.

“Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now stream games directly on devices they already have, including as of last month, Amazon Fire TVs. Finally, we are bringing our IP to new audiences.

“Fallout made its debut as a TV show on Amazon Prime this quarter. It was the second most watched show on the platform ever, and hours played on Game Pass for Fallout increased nearly 5 times.”

Earlier this month Microsoft raised Xbox Game Pass prices and announced plans to introduce a new Standard subscription tier that doesn’t include day one releases.

Modern Warfare 3 also became the first Call of Duty game to be added to the subscription service, while Black Ops 6 will be the first Call of Duty title to launch day one when it’s released on October 25, 2024.

The first Activision Blizzard game to be added to Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service was Diablo 4 on March 28.

According to the latest sales data from research firm Circana, Xbox Series consoles are tracking 13% behind where Xbox One was during the same period of its lifecycle in the US market.

Microsoft has already confirmed it’s working on new Xbox hardware and claimed that it has “some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that we’re going to share this holiday”.