The Xbox Series X and S were the fastest-selling consoles in Xbox history, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who announced the company’s earnings call for the entire year last year. He has confirmed this is still true a year later, over two years into the life cycles of the consoles. Although that may seem a bit apparent, what Nadella is stating is that at least when compared to earlier Xbox consoles, sales of the most recent Xbox consoles haven’t slowed down considerably since they launched. Microsoft has “sold more consoles life-to-date than any previous generation of Xbox,” to use his precise words. So, over two years after its release, none of the previous Xbox generations had sold as many copies.
That is a significant number of Xboxes, especially in light of the numerous difficulties the continuing chip scarcity has caused in getting the dang devices on the shelves in the first place. Additionally, Nadella mentioned a few other figures. He reminded us that for the past three quarters running, Xbox systems have led the market for next-generation gaming consoles they’ve outsold PS5 throughout that time. Aside from the hardware, Xbox’s xCloud appears to be functioning just well. According to Nadella, more than four million individuals have streamed Fortnite on xCloud to date, including more than one million users who are completely new to the xCloud ecosystem.
While this is all fantastic news for Xbox, it was also revealed that gaming revenue for the quarter was down 7% from the same period last year, content and service sales were down 6%, and hardware revenue was down 11%. All of that may not sound exciting, but it also shouldn’t come as a surprise because, as of last quarter, the company was still basking in the glow of a significant uptick in hardware sales, and because of a gradual fall in hardware sales is typical over time. In terms of content revenue, Xbox will probably have to wait until October or later for some major releases to boost those figures even further as there aren’t many blockbuster titles now available.