A white version might be out very soon (Picture: Microsoft)

Microsoft has published its latest financial results, which demonstrate the impact of the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard .

After Microsoft officially acquired Activision Blizzard in October last year, the company’s gaming division has unsurprisingly seen a significant uptick.

In the last sales quarter ending December 31, 2023, Microsoft’s gaming revenue jumped up by 49% to $7.1 billion (£5.6 billion). While revenue grows though, sales of Xbox hardware have continued to drop – especially in Europe .

It’s a similar picture in Microsoft’s report for the latest financial quarter, ending March 31, 2024, which saw gaming revenue increase by 51% year-over-year to $5.45 billion (£4.3 billion).

Xbox content and services revenue also went up 62% year-over-year, thanks to the Activision Blizzard acquisition. Both these results went above Microsoft’s expectations for the quarter.

This positivity is somewhat soured though when you look at the hardware results, even if they do fall in line with Microsoft’s expectations. Xbox hardware revenue declined 31% year-over-year in the quarter, which is the steepest drop since the Xbox Series X/S launched in 2020.

According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, the addition of Activision Blizzard games helped the company ‘set third quarter records for game streaming hours, console usage, and monthly active devices’ – but no specific figures were released.





Nadella also highlighted the addition of Diablo 4 on its Game Pass subscription service last month, which led to ‘one of our biggest first Game Pass launches ever’ with over 10 million hours played within the first 10 days.

All the positives in this Microsoft report, in relation to its gaming division, entirely stem from the Activision Blizzard acquistion, which crucially gave the company ownership over Call Of Duty . Earlier this month, this acquisition, along with Xbox’s multiplatform pivot, even led to more Microsoft games appearing in the PlayStation Store top 20 than Sony.

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While this change in approach appears to be working financially, the bigger question is what this means for Xbox hardware moving forward.

The declining sales of the Xbox Series X/S explains why Microsoft is already talking about its next generation hardware , but it’s unclear what will happen if the company’s next console, which is expected to arrive in 2026 , also falls short.

There’s also the issue that because the increases are due to Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft did not own at this time last year, they will decrease drastically next year.

At that point the significant growth of this financial year will cease and it’s worrying to think that Microsoft might turn to swallowing up other companies, as the only way to keep the arrows moving up.





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