Strong Gaming Results.

FY25 Q1

• Gaming Revenue = Up 43% (Beat Expectation of Mid 30s).
• Content and Services Revenue = Up 61% (Beat Expectation of Low-Mid 50s).
• Hardware = Down 29%.
• Activision Blizzard = $1.69bn Revenue.

Satya:

• We are focused on business positioned for long term growth by higher margin C&S.
• See transformation by diversifying how to access content.
• New records of MAU in the quarter as more players than ever across devices and Xbox platform.
• Game Pass for Q1 record for total revenue and average revenue per subscriber.
• Call of Duty Black Ops 6 biggest COD release ever.
• Record for day one players and Game Pass subscriber additions on launch day.
• Unit sales on PlayStation and Steam sales also up 60% YoY.
• This speaks to our strategy of meeting gamers where they are by enabling them to access games on the screen they spend their time on.

Personal Computing

• Above expectations, driven by Gaming and Search.
• Gaming driven by stronger 1st party, 3rd party and Console performance.
• 61% C&S Revenue (Impacted by 53% Activision).
• Strong execution in margin improvement in Gaming

It also had the highest total PC players during opening weekend in franchise history

This is their long term plan.

They knew hardware isnt going anywhere so they are gonna do what MS has been best at - providing a software service. Windows, Office, etc.

Did bo6 do more than mw3 $800mil in 3 days?

November 2014: 188M
January 2016: 250M
May 2019: 300M
April 2021: 400M
June 2022: 425M
October 2024: 500M

BO6 is top in player count, but it was also the first to be day one Gamepass. Sales are probably down somewhat over the top past entries in the series. Here is the ranking for the games we got revenue info on (the CoD games not on this list sold significant less the ones that are on this list, which is why Activision didn't release revenue information for them):

• Modern Warfare 2 (2022)- $800m in 3 days, $1b in 10 days
• Black Ops 2- $500m in 24 hours, $1b in 15 days
• Modern Warfare 3 (2011)- $775m in 5 days, $1b in 16 days
• Black Ops 1- $650m in 5 days, $1b in a 6 weeks
• Modern Warfare (2019)- $600m in 3 days, $1b in 7 weeks
• Black Ops 3- $550m in 3 days
• Black Ops 4- $500m in 3 days
• WWII- $500m in 3 days
• Modern Warfare 2 (2009)- $550m in 5 days, $1b in 2 months

Worth noting that the more recent games in the series had day one microtransactions and I'm pretty sure Activision included microtransaction revenue in their launch revenue calculations for them, so copy sales for games like MW2 (2022) and MW (2019) would have been down compared to the peak of the series in copy sales from 2009-2012.

So now that BO6 provided a big boost to Game Pass, it would make sense to start dropping the other CoDs in a regular cadence...Right?...Lol. Even once a month to keep Call of Duty fans subscribed to Game Pass without hurting Black Ops 6 too much would be better than whatever they're doing now. I'll likely play Black Ops 6 but I'm not paying for Cold War or Infinite Warfare so get them on Game Pass and I will play them too.

Microsoft can literally coast their way to having the first "billion-unit-selling" franchise.  Or has someone else reached that?