Today is Microsoft earnings reporting day. It’s the day every quarter when we get a peek at how Xbox is doing by the numbers.
And the numbers that stood out to us the most on today’s call were around Cloud and PC growth, as well as a 2% growth for Xbox Game Pass in general.
While hardware (console) sales are down 29%, not unexpectedly this late in the cycle, we think Xbox has got to be happy with the overall growth in their ecosystem.
A Record 140 Million Hours Streamed on Xcloud in the Quarter
This is the first time Microsoft has reported such a number. But, it is big! It is close to the number that GeForce NOW last reported for an entire year! Comparing on a quarter to quarter basis, you are looking at about a 2.5x better number from Xbox here.
Of course, this number could mean a few things. It could mean that 140 Million players streamed one hour or that 14 Million players streamed 10 hours during the quarter.
It does mean that an average of 64,000 players are using Xcloud at any given moment (averaged over off-hours etc. as well). This is by far the best number we have ever seen for a cloud gaming service.
PC Game Pass Grew By 30%
The number of people using Game Pass on PC grew by an astounding 30%. That is a huge growth number that is rarely seen in a mature subscription service. This number does include people accessing PC Game Pass via cloud services like GeForce NOW and Boosteroid as well.
Clearly the Xbox console makes up a core way to experience the Xbox ecosystem (and it is not going anywhere), but the ecosystem itself is growing into new form-factors as well. The future of the platform is in the ability to play your Xbox titles anywhere and everywhere.
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