Xbox games revenue climbs in Q3

It’s pretty tough to get a handle on Xbox performance nowadays, but Microsoft’s latest financials do reveal a few snippets.

Microsoft Gaming revenues for fiscal Q3 climbed four per cent. It was also revealed that Xbox Live users jumped 13 per cent to 52m active accounts. Microsoft no longer reports its Xbox hardware sales.

That’s pretty much it, however, as Xbox performance is now buried away amongst the numbers for Microsoft’s Personal Computing division alongside many other businesses, including Windows.

Personal Computing revenue overall, however, fell by seven per cent, while operating profit climbed by 20 per cent to over $2bn. Windows OEM revenue increased by five per cent but revenues from Microsoft’s Surface tablet PC line plunged by 26 per cent, which will likely be a big worry for the company.

Phone revenues were also plunging, dropping by $730m. Microsoft didn’t even report a percentage on that.

More successful, however, was Microsoft’s cloud business, which has grown from $10bn earlier last year to $15.2bn. It is expected to reach $20bn by 2018. It was also confirmed that LinkedIn, which was acquired last year, contributed $975m.

Microsoft reported overall earnings of $13.4bn, which was a year-on-year decline of around seven per cent. Revenues reached $23.6bn.

Our results this quarter reflect the trust customers are placing in the Microsoft Cloud,” CEO Satya Nadella said. From large multi-nationals to small and medium businesses to non-profits all over the world, organizations are using Microsoft’s cloud platforms to power their digital transformation.”