Microsoft revealed its quarterly earnings today and both Surface tablets and Xbox consoles saw increased sales from this time last year. The Surface business grew an astonishing 117% and went up to $888 million for the quarter. Xbox hardware revenue increased 10% year-over-year. The company sold 1.4 million Xbox consoles last quarter compared to 1.1 million the year before. What’s most significant is that revenue from Xbox Live transactions increased 58% and went up $205 million. When you combine the hardware and software sales, total revenue for the Xbox division went up 27%.
Microsoft reported overall sales of $22.2 billion for the last three months ending on June 30. Excluding writedown charges and other costs, Microsoft said it had a profit of $0.62 per share. This beats the $0.58 cents per share Wall Street estimate and shows that the company is thriving.
However, due to Ballmer’s acquisition of Nokia and devaluing of the mobile manufacturer’s assets, the company had to factor in a massive $7.5 billion writedown. Coupling that with restructuring costs, the total writedown costs came out at $8.4 billion. While the overall quarter resulted in a loss, at least the company is past the Nokia acquisition and can move forward. Considering that Microsoft has $95 billion in cash excluding other assets—which is more than the value of all the other console makers combined—they should be fine even if Ballmer’s Nokia acquisition didn’t turn out to be what they had hoped.
What’s great is that the Xbox division is thriving and that means more games and other experiences for us. I wonder how much of an impact the amazing holiday lineup and the release of backwards compatibility will have on sales. This is definitely an exciting time to be an Xbox owner.
Source: CNET
Asher Madan is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 182 articles to ICXM in 2015, focused on Windows and PC, and Xbox news: joined Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017 covering Xbox news, hardware, and reviews.