With the reports coming from Microsoft, the company’s June quarter’s revenue figures show that their gaming revenue decreased by 9 per cent or $152 million, coming to a total of $1.53 billion. This is being mostly attributed to the declining number of sales of consoles and the low average price of Xbox One.
However, the monthly user base of Xbox Live increased by 33 per cent, reaching the mark of 49 million which boosted the company’s revenues from online services by 4 per cent. While Microsoft has ceased revealing the sales numbers for Xbox, it seems quite clear from their revenue figures that the company is falling behind in comparison to its direct competitor, Sony’s PlayStation which has been dominating the industry in the recent times.
In the month of May, Microsoft had announced that they were taking a step back from their phone business, while also indicating that they are not going out all together, following which they cut almost 1,800 jobs and took a blow of $950 million.
The Xbox business comes under Microsoft’s ‘More Personal Computing’ sector alongside phones and tablets and this category’s revenue fell by 4 per cent or $346 million. Microsoft, in their release also mentioned, “excitement for new games on Xbox One and Windows 10 led to a 13 per cent sequential increase in hours spent on gaming on Xbox One and a nearly 19 per cent sequential increase in hours gaming on Windows 10 PCs.”
The company has been offering heavy discounts on Xbox One consoles, which comes right before the debut of their upcoming console Xbox One S, which is slated to release 2 August, this year.