How is Xbox doing in 2024? We are seeing the company’s numbers

This Thursday Microsoft made its financial reports public. When such a large company does this, it’s time to take a closer look to discover what’s interesting, what they tell us and what they don’t. And within this whole array of businesses, today we are going to focus on Xbox, Microsoft’s video game division.

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This is Microsoft’s second quarterly report which includes the effects of the purchase of Activision/Blizzard/King, the gaming giant responsible for WoW, CoD or Candy Crush.

How is Xbox doing in 2024 after the big purchase

• Xbox’s content and services revenue grew by 62% and game revenue by 51%, in both cases mainly thanks to Activision.
• At the same time, Xbox hardware revenue decreased by 31%, and the report indicates that the overall impact of the acquisition of Activision includes a loss of $350 million in operating income.
• This loss includes a series of adjustments for the “Activision content movement” throughout the ecosystem, as many of Activision’s current titles have required updates to adapt to Xbox’s first-party practices.

It is illustrative of what was really at stake for Microsoft over the course of the past year, as it defended its acquisition of Activision in US and UK courts. Without Activision’s software lineup on its side, the financial story could have been much worse for Xbox.

This is a good example of the type of “yes, but” stories that have emerged from Xbox so far this year. Overall, Xbox revenues have increased, but it is due to conveniently acquiring the rights to several of the most popular franchises in the Western world. The news is not so bad, but it comes with an asterisk.

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Microsoft has also had to deal with a constant flow of bad publicity due to consumers’ perception that Xbox, despite all its efforts and successes, is permanently stuck in third place in the active console market.

Looking at the numbers, it seems that Xbox needed the acquisition of Activision / Blizzard more for its own long-term survival than the company -back then- Bobby Kotick. We will see how the year ends and if they start to recover.