Starfield helped Xbox achieve record-breaking gaming revenue for Q1, but it's not all good news
Bethesda's RPG and Xbox Game Pass did well, hardware not so much.
Microsoft has shared its financial results for the opening segment of the 2024 fiscal year, with the numbers pointing to record gaming revenue across the quarter for Xbox, though hardware sales have seen a slight drop.
According to the data (thanks, Eurogamer) published by the company behind Xbox, its gaming arm generated just over $3.9 billion during the period running from July 1 to September 30, marking a year-on-year increase of 9% in terms of overall gaming revenue. This makes it Xbox’s highest-earning Q1 ever, with the numbers being acknowledged as record-breaking.
Microsoft cited strong performances from first-party titles and Xbox Game Pass as the main drivers behind the uptick in revenue. The most noteworthy of the former to arrive during Q1 was Starfield, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (thanks, The Verge) having revealed in an investor call following the publishing the results that the RPG “set a record for the most Game Pass subscriptions added on a single day ever” on launch.
Last month, Bethesda stated that the game was “the biggest launch” in its history in a social media post commemorating the fact that it’d hit the 10 million player mark within the first few weeks following its release.
While Xbox’s Q1 content and services revenue, a number which is influenced by the performance of Game Pass, reportedly went up by 13%, things weren’t all rosy, with its hardware revenue having dipped by 7% compared to last year.
Microsoft doesn’t provide concrete figures for console sales in its quarterly results, though it did cite the number of Xbox consoles sold this quarter as being lower than the previous marks.
While the company closed its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard earlier this month, the tangible effects of that acquisition on its gaming revenue won’t be seen until further down the line. Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently confirmed that we likely won’t see any ActiBlizz games, such as entries in the Call of Duty and Diablo series, arrive on Game Pass until 2024.
If you are one of those currently subscribed to Game Pass, you can currently enjoy the deeply terrifying hallucination that is Like A Dragon: Ishin for free.