590°

Microsoft's full-year gaming revenues nearly flat for fiscal 2020

Minecraft, subscriptions, and COVID-19 saw content and services up, but hardware was down

Read Full Story >>
gamesindustry.biz
THC CELL1159d ago (Edited 1159d ago )

Everyone saving for next gen
And new next gen ready TVs

cesar41159d ago

Yeah but if you believe vgchartz their actual console sales have been up yoy by double digit percent. So their actual revenue is down from that percent at 2%. So revenue doesn’t paint the picture you would expect.

RazzerRedux1159d ago

I'm no fan of vgchartz, but where are they saying console sales are up? Their yearly change in sales shows Xbox down 11%.

"XOne 6,829,443 (-11%)&q uot;

https://www.vgchartz.com/ye...

cesar41159d ago (Edited 1159d ago )

https://www.vgchartz.com/ar...

This link is what I was using which states a 23.9% increase in yoy sales.

Not that I particularly believe that. I think vgcartz is over tracking xbox to get them to 50m or something.

Stanjara1158d ago

Retailers are selling their stock that they bought from Microsoft who knows when.

That's why shipped units means sold for manufacturer.

Abracadabra1158d ago

Nobody "believes" vgchartz numbers... but everybody use vgchartz numbers to "prove" their point. LOL.

bouzebbal1158d ago

xbox performing poorly in 2020 with 0 game available.. PS4 really strong with a massive number of big exclusives.

RazzerRedux1158d ago (Edited 1158d ago )

@cesar4

"This link is what I was using which states a 23.9% increase in yoy sales."

Yes, but those are year to date numbers. Microsoft is reporting fiscal year numbers. These periods overlap, but are not the same.

alb18991158d ago

It calls gamepass. That's the answer about sells declined on XBOX.

+ Show (4) more repliesLast reply 1158d ago
Apex131159d ago (Edited 1159d ago )

What are you smoking? They totally messed up their momentum of the 360. They had a poor reveal of Xbox one and then had terrible exclusives/no games in the last couple of years, they had a 4 year head starry and got out sold by the Nintendo switch bin under 3 years. But hey, I guess people are saving for the next generation 🤣🤣 If XSX fails they wool be more focused on game pass as a service and step out of the hardware business and that may work out better.

rainslacker1158d ago

Weren't other consoles selling out though? Or at least the switch was, and thought the PS4 saw a rise.

jznrpg1158d ago

PS4 was sold out for awhile as they were selling on EBay for more than cost . Used prices also went up considerably . I’m not sure what the situation is now but it was like that for some time

Abracadabra1158d ago

Did people read the article before commenting on N4G?
... most important question... did people actually understand what was in the article?

1158d ago
+ Show (3) more repliesLast reply 1158d ago
cesar41159d ago Show
Father__Merrin1159d ago

They would be better off going software and services

gamer78041159d ago

Technically everyone would do better if they didn’t have the cost of hardware... they make their money off content and services mostly. But you need the hardware to sell your services. People still need boxes, and it will be that way for decades to come.

1158d ago
Zulu1159d ago

So would Sony, console sales are a very small portion of profit, and that only occurs towards the end of a consoles life cycle. At the beginning both firms will be losing money on each console sale, so services and software are pretty much the name of the game for these company’s

Nebaku1158d ago

You mean like when people said the same thing about Nintendo before the Switch?

stuna11159d ago

But nooooo, no one wanted to believe that gamepass is actually a money pit for not just Microsoft, but the industry as a whole! No one in their right mind could think gamepass is profitable in the sense that Microsoft is making lucrative income off of it.

1159d ago Replies(2)
gamer78041159d ago (Edited 1159d ago )

Hello! Welcome to The Cloud! This is how these business models start off... Lol

rainslacker1158d ago (Edited 1158d ago )

Did you know that roughly 85% of new tech investment and ideas tend to fail?

Silicon valley tends to be a throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, with companies chasing after the next big thing, which is often just a reimagining of some other existing thing for a different market...say the netflix of gaming for a relevant example. 100 failures is usually chump change when the big one hits.

Its not to say itll fail, and of course MS has the financial backing in spades, just to say that tech business models tend to be highly unreliable.

gamer78041158d ago (Edited 1158d ago )

@rainslacker i don't know about fail but the amount of success rate varies for sure with only a handful really taking off. i was at a hardware comapany that went to SaaS then all the way to cloud. some of our competitors failed, but ours took off and was bought by a huge corporation in Cali, so sure i know that it is a risk, but if you can have business model that involves reocurring subscriptions its great for finance, but only after several years because you don't have the giant up front sale, but continued sales over time.

CaptainObvious8781159d ago (Edited 1159d ago )

From a common sense perspective, it's hard to believe xgp can be sustainable, even in it's current form of very little exclusives, let alone AAA experiences.

Halo infinite cost MS 500 mil. How many years would it take for them to recoup that cost for that single game? Not to mention all their other dev teams that won't have any releases for maybe another 2-3 years and all the 3rd party subsidy they have to constantly pay

It's very clear quality is most likely going to have to suffer in order to make this profitable.

fiveby91159d ago

Bear in mind xgp excludes expansions and other mtx. So MS will increasingly rely on such additional purchases after someone subscribes to xgp.

Ausbo1158d ago

They also still sell games on Xbox and on steam. It’s not an exclusive revenue stream.

Christopher1158d ago

@fiveby9: First party games include all DLC, but not MTX. For Halo, they tend to allow all content for everyone but have MTX (cosmetic stuff you can buy) to offset the costs of getting everyone to have the same content always for MP. Gears 5 DLC is free on XGP, for example.

crazyCoconuts1158d ago

We don't even know net income/ profit for the Xbox division, just revenue. They don't share the breakdown by division as far as I can tell. So they could be losing money and we wouldn't know it