The Verge - Microsofts overall gaming revenues are only up thanks to Activision Blizzard

@Antwan3K: imagine coping so hard that you’re going to compare data that doesn’t exist. “Well the truth would be different if Xbox didn’t own ABK.” Oh…k? But they do? So…? The world we live in now is one in which MS owns ABK. The financials don’t change because fanboys are upset.

"Bu buh but...."

lol :P

There's no hiding from the fact that Xbox's traditional business is facing some significant headwinds and is in a more difficult position than its competitors but, this is expected when their larger vision requires a tradeoff. The biggest challenge is how well they can execute that vision in the near and mid-term.

Oh boy! The Activision/Blizzard/King acquisition by Microsoft sure eats away at some people’s souls. 😅

You will think they would be over it by now.

@Pedro: You would think so but it does fit the narrative of them not loving their system, they just hate your’s. 😂

A simplified breakdown for all the Lems who are seemingly confused by the numbers. Activision “boosted” their revenue metric (which would have been down yoy otherwise) but ultimately cost Xbox $350 million because of poor margins and operating costs. Congrats?

God damn, Activision is a big ol beast. Anywho no real point in reading too much into those figures at the moment either positive or negative. The sheer size of the acquisition is going to distort figures and trends in the short term.

ABK is MS....it is Xbox now. So the growth YOY is there. It's really the next few years that will be interesting. Will it continue to grow strongly YOY (not as big as this jump of course)? Or will it be very small growth after this big jump?

I do suspect we will see another round of layoffs at Xbox before years end though sadly :(. Just due to the sheer size of getting ABK, there is still going to be a lot of process to sift through.

So no need for concern and no cause to gloat.....yet.

We have one still trying to cope with ABK being Xbox.

It's a rather simple concept that TC and other cows can't seem to cope with..

@Pedro: The struggle is indeed real. 😂

The Xbox brand is almost done. Consumers have spoken.

Considering the fact that the Xbox brand has more monthly-active-users than Nintendo and generates more gaming revenue than Nintendo; if the Xbox brand is "dead", what does that make Nintendo?.. 🤔

Out of the big three, maybe it's just time to admit (and accept) that Xbox is solidly #2 in gaming with potential to become #1 depending on how consumers react to Call of Duty marketing shifting away from PlayStation..

Xbox is the brand that folks like you have been saying is dead for over a decade. I am surprised you haven't got the memo after all these years.🤷🏾‍♂️

you'd expect there to be massive integration costs for both bethesda and activision so soon after the acquisitions. as a gamer i'll be happier when (hopefully not if) we start to see bethesda's name in amongst positive gaming division news

Yes I am being a bit of a smartass but it's just funny because people are like "MS only profitable because they do business things! WEAKSAUCE!" and I'm sitting here like "Well...that's how businesses make profit, by doing business things." lol.

Big companies eat little(r) companies, grow big and strong! RAWR!

MS does it. Sony does it. I imagine even Nintendo does it.

It's also important to remember that MS is a trillion dollar company and relative to the whole company the acquisition, while large, is likely a more reasonable % as opposed to if you are just basing it off their game division/xbox brand.

Revenue is down and Activision Blizzard ended up costing Xbox money. No software and services growth. Hardware spiraling down the toilet. And folks here wanna spin this as a positive? It’s Twilight Zone up in this place

"if you exclude Activision Blizzard".. 🤡

Makes sense. Sonys revenue is where it’s at because of all their acquisition. No surprises

If you take out the number bloating their revenue (and operating losses 🤭) you can see losses in every segment in Xboxs gaming business. Meaning their strategies aren’t working. And a year from now they can’t hide behind ABK numbers. There’ll just be losses across the board. And following the trends the losses will be HUGE 🤷🏾‍♂️

Maybe you should wait to see what happens in a year then..

Because right now, Xbox content/services revenue went up 62% with an overall increase in gaming revenue of 51%.. 🤷🏽‍♂️

Microsoft owns ABK.. ABK is Xbox.. "excluding ABK" isn't a thing.. Just cope with that simple fact and stop with the perpetual spinning..

Neither Sony nor Nintendo had to swallow a major portion of the industry to make up for their failures. When Nintendos WiiU failed, and hard it did fail, they were able to recover since Nintendo cultivated and expanded their assets, the basis for their successful persistence over decades. How many studios did Nintendo acquire in the meantime? Do you actually have any idea?

Btw. you know MS themselves admitted why they "forced" to make "good business", resp.

"But it's just the truth of the matter is that when you're in third place in the console marketplace. And the top two players are as strong as they are and have in certain cases a very discrete focus on doing deals and other things that kind of make being Xbox hard for us as a team. That's on us, not on anybody else.

"We lost the worst generation to lose in the Xbox One generation, where everybody built their digital library of games. When you go and you're building on Xbox we want our Xbox community to feel awesome, but this idea that if we just focused more on great games on our console that somehow we're going to win the console race doesn't really lay into the reality of most people

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/457086/phil-spencer-we-lost-the-worst-generation-to-lose-in-the-xbox-one-generation/

Even Spencer gives a see-through to how much they suck, while blaming the big mean competition.

Begs the question, why are you so focused on a piece of electronic entertainment, when it really is the company behind the system. MS is objectively inept, only able to keep up by investing huge amounts of cash - starting with losing 5b on the og Xbox - all the while those record investment don't bear much fruit. In the contrary.

"Begs the question, why are you so focused on a piece of electronic entertainment"

A bit rich coming from a sap who has real emotions towards Sony and a console.

Sony Being in last place got cows tiny minds frazzled 😂🤣

Then why is Xbox giving us the with and without ABK figures? Because it offers context.

Is Xbox spinning too? Goof 😂🤣

This thread is a study in how the system wars has gone off the rails... We're now dividing portions of businesses to legitimize our points and everyone is an expert analyst In a drastically evolving industry.

People in this thread struggle to conceptualise why for sake of comparison it can be interesting to look growth by excluding a product line from the equation. This stuff happens all the time.

I used to read similar stories in financial newspapers all the time:

"If you exclude Taycan from the Porsche line up, car sales have down 3%". Doesn't matter than Taycans make up 40% of Porsche's sales, its interesting to learn if it wasn't for the introduction of their first electric vehicle, the company would be performing worse than the year before.

Same with Lambo and the Urus and many other businesses.

It's an interesting abstract... And it's got you all so defensive about it. Y'all need to read financial literature.

Nope, just you and other cows.. You've been on constant spin cycle since the ABK acquisition and now you want to "exclude ABK" in order to continue with your fanboy narratives..

I guess we should "exclude Bethesda" whenever it suits you aswell. 🙄

@palasta: How am I focused on a piece of electronic equipment? 😐

Eroica, XBOX provided this information, not fanboys. They showed us their negative yoy growth without ABK, and how ABK impacted the quarterly results. Ignoring these details and dismissing them as a fanboy narrative is taking us “off the rails.” Xbox thought it was important enough to share. So why do we have to ignore it here?!?

Lems need to read financial literature? I’ve been trying to get them to read past the headline for years. Now they even refuse to read what Xbox puts out. They want to be lied to. They want to feel special. They want to be on the “winning” side. Anything beyond that is “spin.”

That +62% to Xbox content/services revenue and +51% to overall gaming revenue really has the damage control in overdrive.. 😏

"b bu but we should exclude ABK!1!!" 😭🤡

I know right? Why would Xbox exclude ABK like that in their quarterly financial report? What a bunch of Cows!1!

🤡

@ghostofgolden: its how attached these people are to a piece of plastic. I thought it was a very interesting read.

It shows why MS was willing to splurge $70 billion on the largest videogame publisher.

It might not be as bad an investment as previously thought.

Xbox knows video games will continue to grow. And looking at the other industries, M&A’s is how the big dogs expand their footprint. I just feel like they did things wildly out of order. Buy the big publishers in 2017 and then bang out Game Pass once the entire gaming industry runs through Xbox. There have been a few odd missteps that tells us their executives may have been at odd with what the path forward was. But now it’s pretty clear. Xbox games are going everywhere that video games can be played. The more they slow play this pivot the more money they are leaving on the table.

It doesn’t help that those other pesky companies (Nintendo and PlayStation) continue to succeed outside of what has been dubbed the “future model” of the industry. Consumers shifted to streaming/subscription movies and music damn near instantly. Consumers own nothing and couldn‘t care less. There‘s still a giant segment of gaming consumers that buy games and don’t subscribe to any of the services. In fact they are still the majority. Maybe Xbox is the wrong brand to be leading this charge? 🤷🏾‍♂️

The coping needs to stop. Xbox is cooked. They wasted all that money just to tack on Activision's revenue to theirs. In the meantime, hardware is dwilding to nothing everywhere but the US, where Xbox Series still getting soundly beat by PS5 monthly, even though MS is offering a cheaper model.

Xbox has ran out of options but to release games on their rivals' platforms since their hardware base is shrinking rapidly. It's obvious Phil isn't calling the shots on certain decisions with Xbox anymore, and I still don't see how he got to keep his position since he seems to be the reason they are where they are in the console market in the first place.

Microsoft excluded ABK and yet their content/services were up 62% and overall gaming revenue was up 51%?!..

Wow, that's even more impressive than I thought.. 🤡

funny you think the people "attached to a piece of plastic" are from the Xbox camp.. the camp that is continually admitting that the console war is over, that Xbox lost the console war, and that the future of Xbox is beyond just concentrating on consoles.. 😐

sure, "without ABK" Xbox would have been down this quarter.. and?.. Xbox has been down before and Xbox has been up before (same with PlayStation).. yet, regardless of if Xbox is up or down for any particular quarter, cows will still spin it into "bad news" for Xbox.. 🤷‍♂️ according to cows, there hasn't been a "good" quarter for Xbox in the last two generations.. something that is factually not true.. Xbox, in terms of revenue, was about twice the size it was during the Xbox 360 generationbefore the ABK deal..

and, like it or not, Xbox bought ABK.. and with ABK, Xbox content/services and overall gaming are up to the tune of 62% and 51% respectively.. and it's the cows (y'know the ones who are so attached to plastic box wars) who can't accept that simple reality..

so bottomline:

if you want to have a good faith discussion about what Xbox/Bethesda/ABK will be generating in revenue a year from now after the dust settles and ABK is completely integrated into whatever business plan Microsoft has, sure.. nothing wrong with that.. if you want to discuss the viability of any plan Microsoft has for Xbox if hardware sales continue to plummet, sure.. fair discussion..

but to "exclude ABK" just to downplay the clearly massive increases to Xbox gaming revenue is just an exercise in damage control.. plain and simple..

No… When Xbox excluded ABK their numbers were down. Did you not read the report? Xbox spells it all out for you.

These figures were all provided by Xbox in their report…

All this work and ABK is still Xbox.😂

Good thing is.... ABK don't do shit for Xbox.

@loudheadphones: Except increase their revenue and profits.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of financial's knows this isn't great news. They only posted an increase because they are comparing the growth to years before they bought the largest third party publisher. Looking at this trend they will be posting negative growth every year after this unless they do something drastic to change the companies they own. It also shows their strategy wasn't working and buying up the industry was all they could do to save face.

LOL. What profits? Where? If there is a profit, Xbox wouldn't go 3rd party. After all these years, Xbots still living in denial

We clearly aren’t dealing with people with basic knowledge of financials. There’s a few folks here that will just blindly defend Xbox. Thats’s why we have folks here accusing people of spin because they are referencing figures without the ABK revenue, when in reality Xbox themselves provided the figures without the ABK revenue. And now the future Xbox forecasts all look bleak, with hardware projected to be down further and services growth still not moving. This time next year when there’s yoy comparisons with ABK revenue the numbers are gonna be abysmal.

But we’re spinning 😂

clearly you don't know when you're being made fun of.. 🤡

the point is that, sure, Xbox numbers would be down IF you exclude ABK.. BUT, ABK is Xbox.. and WITH ABK, the numbers are up bigly, as expected.. 🤷‍♂️

not sure what's so hard to understand..

@loudheadphones: I see that facts are not your favorite topic.🤭

and anyone with basic knowledge knows they bought ABK to increase revenue.. 😐

and *gasp*, it worked..

we'll have to wait and see how things look next year.. but anything before that, is just damage controlling the fact that Xbox content and services is up 62% and Xbox gaming revenue is up 51%..

the cows are really having a hard time with this simple logic..

I didn’t exclude anything. Xbox did. And Xbox excluded ABK to show their losses… Not sure what’s so hard to understand…

🤡😂🤣