Why do people enter sales related topics wanting to be offended ?
People are going to discuss physical sales, console sales, cloud, revenue etc etc. Console sales might not be interesting to you but it is for others.
Unless someone is blatantly trolling or has a history of trolling … maybe try not to police the conversation lol.
Completely agree with all of this! The next 2 quarters should be very rough hardware wise (hellblade alone cant move consoles even if its a 90+ MC game) so who knows what will happen in the last 2.
I’m just focusing in the console aspect of the gaming division. Software wise and in every other area Xbox has never in its life be this strong and you could argue they have potential to beat up Nintendo and Sony in the future. But since a lot of MS plans for the future of the branding is so far away (like 5 years or/and beyond) the focus should be on the console aspect of the business and since that is not doing great thats why a lot of xbox fans have this feeling of “uncertainty” surroinding the brand.
If they were smart they should have done this but since marketing budget keeps getting butchered…
I can empathize with some xbox fans when they say “what is MS doing? what is their plan? do they even care about xbox as a console?” because yes, these are the types of movements that seriously makes you questione their leadership. If console it still importan…why are you reducing marketing budget? How will this affect ABK? I would argue the reason (or one of many maybe) series is lagging behind xbox one and will continue to do so is because they completely abandon the European market.
And then they will say “console revenue is lower than expected” YEAH I wonder why 
Eeeeh lets wait and say first PS results.
Because they are important for the coming years. Mobile app its still far away, Xbox cloud will start getting investment again this year so its years away too. their PC storefront still a mess so what does that leave us? MS needs the console xbox brand until all of the above pans out.
All in all with what has been happening recently I understand why some are feeling down with Xbox right now.
No its just the fact their is all these great numbers and the primary talk goes back to hardware. Why dwell on that when their is other things to talk about regarding these results?
Or you know, the company whose financials are being discussed has been saying publicly, for 5+ years now, that hardware sales are not the focus of their business…
Honestly, a lack/reduction of marketing budget for Xbox should be called out. Third Party or not, you still need to market your product. It’s like they are not even trying lol. Microsoft bean counters thinking gaming is like azure or windows office lmao.
This site is called Xbox era, not Microsoft Gaming Era, just saying. Not that I disagree of what your saying though.
Because they’re known things that don’t really generate much dialogue. Revenue being the highest it’s ever been is common sense due to the ABK purchase. Most MAU’s ever make sense due to all of the mega IP’s and live services they have under their tool shed. Etc etc.
Holiday sales being somewhat disappointing despite one of the most aggressive price cuts we’ve seen in years is just naturally going to dominate the discourse.
Does the discourse include some doom and gloom ? Of course, people should rightfully call that out but discourse around consoles sales aren’t going to go away, whether people think it’s irrelevant or not.
The problem is the fact the goods do outweigh the bad and yet the bad override the good tenfold over here. The thread title might as well changed to that single bad aspect. I don’t mind the negative but why is it like 90% of the discussion within the thread. It’s old by the 10th post, so it would be nice to branch off to other aspect. It doesn’t help that it’s the same users too. Once you see an icon of a user typing, it’s like “Here it comes…”
You want us to go the hell-holes sites like other era to talk about xbox? I think here people could have reasonable discussions without the fear mongering, doom posting, exagerations…etc that resides in those kind of places. Heck, even installbase have some users that make impossible conversations about xbox. Its ok to talk about the good but so should be talk about the “bad”
Its as you say head scratchinf 
It’s funny that everything but the console sales is “bright” (talking about the earnings of course, what happened days ago while not unexpected was still ugly)
Yeah, the next 2 quartes is purely a decrease in console sales and will be saved only thanks to ABK. Lets not forget they didnt do anything to have a game to help them with sales during that time, Hellblade will come in late May and even if that game is a 90+ game, it wont move consoles. Then they will habe nothing until who knows when as both Avowed and Indy are both late 2024.
This is me. It’s whiplash worthy anger AND depression. I despise the profiteering damanded by business culture. The idea of profits over people physically nauseates me. It is why I left for-profit US “health” care and joined with public service where I intend to stay and work for the betterment of people in my own small way at work, home, and via voting and pushing people-first agendas.
Maybe some users don’t like to see the bigger picture; Bloomberg from Sony Q3 Earnings in November.
“The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant cautioned that its aging PS5 — the device at the heart of its gaming business — could begin to lose steam next year after peaking in fiscal 2024.” “The PS5 discounting is weighing on margins and may force Totoki, to implement cost-cutting measures. Already, Sony is decreasing staff at some of its major studios including Bungie. It plans to reduce gaming M&A next year by roughly 20%, he said Thursday. Sony reported a less-than-projected ¥263.01 billion operating income for the September quarter.”
One company is projecting less operating income, the other just increased operating income by a record 33%. Revenue is nice, but profit margins are more important. Facts are, Xbox has higher P/E ratios than Playstation. I see Playstation bringing all first party games to PC, because the consoles are no longer enough to be profitable.
Well here’s the forecast from Nasdaq on Sony’s next quarter earnings. It’s forecasting to have lower earnings YOY, for the 2nd quarter in a row. Not good news, there is definitely a need for a strategy change.
Bad numbers for hardware and good numbers for software and services is how I read it. If I remember correctly from the last quarters projections they expected the growth in hardware to be higher and the growth in software to be lower so overall not bad but yes, they will be disappointed in xbox console sales which will be offset by selling the higher margin games and services. Will be interesting to see if dropping the backlog of ABK titles into gamepass has a tangible impact on hardware sales as it will almost certainty have a big effect on services numbers after that happens.
As for why no one asks questions about gaming at the investor calls, Microsoft trades at a fairly high near 40x price to earnings ratio. A lot of the share price growth is about the next few years and how amongst the big tech companies Microsoft is perceived to be ahead of the curve in AI. Investors want to know how Microsoft is cashing in on AI across it’s product stack as it provides a vector for huge potential growth.
It seems once again that gamers are mistaking the hardware $ with the number of consoles sold. Bundles and discounts will drive the revenue down, but increase the number of consoles sold. Without knowing how many consoles were sold, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.
Great software results, mid harware results, as usual. If they want hardare to grow they need to market (not US only) it better AND have a regular schedule of releases, but things still not really in place unfortunately. I wonder if we’ll ever see those two things outside corporate mumbo jumbo. Anyway, GP is so good that drives the division even without a fully developed, cohesive and coherent strategy.
I wonder if this low growth outside merger will be Phil’s undoing in the future, MS will want always better results and his in hardware departement are lacking unfortunately. And hardware is still and will be for years the major driver for software revenue.
Even without Activision, it’s not a low growth at all. That’s about +5% in gaming, +10% in content and services, and +3% in hardware. And this is happening when the video gaming industry as a whole is losing gamers and revenue. Nobody’s going to replace Phil, and magically do better than that.
Frankly I think it goes beyond marketing, as important as it is. There’s a lack of localization in many places still. The regional availability and sales representation is also lacking, with Xbox physical games presence surely being diminished with time, that presence only gets worse, and speaking of that I don’t think many realize that Xbox’s subpar physical games support, their DRM implementation and more online dependant system, that those actually matter in some places and are viewed as negatives to the system that makes people stay away from the console, there are places that are still more physical and offline and Xbox simply and rightfully is ignored there even if people know about it, because the other two consoles support their use preferences much better, you know not every place in the world has fiber connection or 5G 24/7, and even in places with optimal connection there are people who will just not buy an Xbox because the physical and offline gaming experience is suboptimal on it.
This is why I say it’s soo much more beyond “games” or marketing. If Series reach 50m consoles it’s actually not bad at all considering all they’re competing against that not just the other consoles, but also their own unaddressed perception issues.
I doubt physical is that relevant anymore, imo localisation is a far bigger concern, their machine translated menus are a joke, I keep repeating it in the Insider App when asked. For the same company of Windows and Office is an aggravating point. Overall their hardware efforts are mid at best since a couple years, I don’t understand how they can expect better results honestly, some analyst there is detached from reality I guess.
Considering Xbox cloud is frozen in time since 2021 (I don’t fully buy the theory about letting it rot for antitrust concerns) and pc store is always the same more or less (we’ll see if they can boost it with Battle.net), I don’t get this mid-low effort for the core of the business and fanbase, or I’m stupid (very possible 
).
I honestly see it, while the percentage of physical players is small, it doesn’t mena the number is inconsiderable, there’s a market of people prioritize physical and Xbox isn’t competing for them. And also, it’s a negative narrative and perception, I mean it was one of the biggest fumbles of Xbox One that gave it negative press.
