“We’re making progress, with a lot more work ahead.”
Xbox leader Asha Sharma has claimed there’s “more demand than consoles available” when it comes to Xbox, and that console sales “remain constrained by supply”.
She was speaking after Microsoft announced its quarterly financial results yesterday, in which Xbox revenue declined two percent year on year. The financials also revealed a drop in Xbox hardware sales, which are down 14 percent year-on-year, driven by a “lower volume of consoles sold”.
Sharma’s positive spin, which she posted on X, highlighted record-breaking performances of Minecraft and World of Warcraft: Forever, and applauded Call of Duty’s “most acclaimed release in more than a decade”. She also trumpeted double-digit revenue growth on PC.
“Console sales remain constrained by supply,” Sharma added, “with more demand than consoles available. We’re working to get more consoles into players’ hands, including through our expanded refurbishment program. We’re making progress, with a lot more work ahead.”
In Microsoft’s earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, company boss Satya Nadella also celebrated Minecraft’s “record quarter” and World of Warcraft having “its largest beta in franchise history”. In addition, Nadella pointed to “one of our strongest first- and third-party [holiday] lineups in years”, name-dropping COD Modern Warfare 4 and GTA 6 as two of the reasons why. But there was no mention of Gears of War: E-Day, which, with a 6th October release date, does fall within that holiday period.
Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood added a bit more detail, noting that the dip in Xbox revenue was “driven by declines in third-party content and Xbox Game Pass, partially offset by growth in first-party content”.
These Xbox results come not long after Asha Sharma said the Xbox division had “started to return to growth” following the drastic restructuring she has spearheaded, and that has resulted in more than 1800 job losses so far. That restructuring work is ongoing, by the way, with more waves of lay-offs expected soon, and as Microsoft more widely offers voluntary redundancy to many thousands of staff.
Overall, though, Microsoft appears to be prospering as a business, with its cloud services in particular driving notable gains in revenue and profit. But it’s those cloud services that are also the cause of calls to boycott the company’s products, because of their use by the Israeli military in the subjugation and ongoing genocide of Palestinians. It’s a connection that recently resulted in Big Walk developer House House refusing to sell its game on Xbox.
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