Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that Xbox Live grew to 64 million active users over the last fiscal quarter. The gaming division is going strong, as its revenue grew by eight percent to $4.23 billion. This can mostly be attributed to strong third-party sales.
Microsoft head Satya Nadella shared more details about the future of gaming at the company during the earnings call. He said the following.
We continue to pursue our expansive opportunity to transform how games are distributed, played, and viewed. Our investments in content, community, and cloud services across every endpoint drove both record user engagement and record average revenue per user, and contributed to our largest gaming revenue quarter ever, driven by software and services. We acquired two new studios this quarter, bringing the total to thirteen, and more than doubling our first-party content capacity in the past six months... Xbox Game Pass subscribers and Mixer engagement also hit new all-time highs. And Minecraft, which continues to be one of the most popular and durable gaming franchises in the industry, delivered record revenue as we expanded into new platforms, geographies and segments like Education... PlayFab surpassed one billion player accounts this quarter, and xCloud will be in public trials later this year as we make progress on our ambition to build a world-class gaming platform spanning mobile, PC, and console.
It's great to see that Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, Minecraft are doing so well. We can't wait until xCloud public trials begin later this year. Hopefully they'll be announced at E3 2019. Microsoft is committed to gaming, and that show.
Are you interested in xCloud? Let us know.
