Microsoft just reported its earnings for the first quarter of fiscal year 2016. The company generated revenue of $21.66 billion and earnings per share of $0.67. Analysts expected the company to earn $21.03 billion and earnings per share of $0.59. Microsoft beat both of these expectations. As a result of this, Microsoft’s stock was up 1.76% and another 6% in after-hours trading. The company reported a net profit (after taxes and other expenses) of $4.6 billion which was up 2%.
Xbox generated less revenue due to price cuts this quarter but more people bought consoles because Xbox Live grew to 39 million active gamers. That’s a huge accomplishment because they’re just counting active gamers and not people who no longer use the service but created an account. It’s the highest for any console manufacturer. That’s an almost 29% increase in Xbox Live membership since last year. Additionally, due to more users playing on Xbox, game sales grew 66%.
Source: VentureBeat
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.