During the quarterly financial conference call for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2025, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood provided more color about the performance of the company’s Xbox gaming business.
During the livestreamed presentation, Nadella mentioned that Microsoft is focusing on improving the profitability of the gaming business, aiming for long-term growth with higher-margin content and platform services.
“We’re focusing on improving the profitability of the business in order to position it for long-term growth driven by higher-margin content and platform services, and we’re delivering on this plan.”
The CEO then boasted about the success of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and announced that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle already achieved over 4 million players.
“Black Ops 6 was top-selling game on Xbox and PlayStation this quarter and saw more players in its launch quarter than any other paid release in the franchise industry. And we saw rave reviews of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which has already been played by more than 4 million people.”
Nadella also mentioned momentum in Xbox Cloud Gaming that broke records with 140 million hours streamed in the quarter. Game Pass also set a new quarterly record and saw 30% more subscribers on PC year-on-year.
“We also continue to see strong momentum for Xbox Cloud Gaming with a record 140 million hours streamed this quarter. Game Pass set a new quarterly record for revenue and grew its PC subscriber base by over 30 percent as we focus on driving fully paid subscribers across endpoints.”
As usual, Hood provided guidance for the gaming business for the current quarter (between January and March 2025), mentioning that overall gaming revenue growth should be in the low-single digits.
Xbox Content and Services revenue is expected to grow in the low to mid-single digits driven by first-party content and Xbox Game Pass. Hardware revenue is expected to continue declining year-on-year.
If you want to read more about Microsoft’s financial performance, you can check out the financial results announced earlier today. Other companies have also already announced their financials this quarter, including Koei Tecmo and Capcom.
