While naysayers may have you believe that Microsoft’s Xbox business is shrouded in doom-and-gloom, the truth is that the gaming service brings in a lot of revenue. This was confirmed on Friday by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a conference call with investors following the company’s Q4 and end-of-year financial reports.
“Our gaming business now is more than nine billion dollars and growing profitably,” said Nadella. “The gaming world is growing faster than ever before from gameplay across multiple devices, to the explosive growth in streaming and esports, to new subscription services and mixed reality scenarios.”
Nadella says that the recently launched Xbox Game Pass and Mixer services are doing well. “We launched two new services to broaden our reach and enrich our gaming experience, both of which are off to a very strong start. Mixer, a new livestreaming service makes it easier than ever before for gamers to create and share across platforms, and to interact in entirely new ways. The Xbox Game Pass is a digital subscription service that expands our existing gaming value proposition,” he added.
Microsoft is doubling down on the company’s vision of enabling gamers to buy a video games and play it on whatever device they like. ““We’re uniquely positioned to capture a large share of this opportunity because of our ability to unite the global community of gamers through Xbox Live – now 53 million-strong, and growing – and to enable new experiences across PC, consoles and mobile.”
Microsoft’s annual gaming revenues exceed Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and every other video game company in the console market except for one – Sony’s gaming division reported revenues of over $14 billion for the same period.
This is a crucial year for Microsoft. The tech company is trailing Sony in both total console sales and the number of high profile first party games released. Microsoft will release the Xbox One X, touted as the most powerful console ever made in November and a number of Xbox executives are teasing announcements at the upcoming Gamescom and Tokyo Game Show events.
