Microsoft: Xbox Business And Mixer Live-Streaming “Growing Profitably”

There may be a lot happening at San Diego Comic-Con, but Microsoft has things spinning elsewhere when it comes to big business with its Xbox One line-up.

The company recently hosted a conference call discussing the results of its fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017 profits, and the numbers are looking good. Both chief executive officer Satya Nadella and chief financial officer Amy Hood had good news to share.

Nadella first brought up the general nature of Xbox business, and how well Microsoft is doing when it comes to capturing its share of the market. "Our gaming business now is more than nine billion dollars and growing profitably. The gaming world is growing faster than ever before from gameplay across multiple devices, to the explosive growth in streaming and esports, to new subscription services and mixed reality scenarios.

We're uniquely positioned to capture a large share of this opportunity because of our ability to unite the global community of gamers through Xbox Live – now 53 million-strong, and growing – and to enable new experiences across PC, consoles and mobile."

In addition, the Xbox One X plays well into future business plans, and its reception has been strong thus far. "Our approach is to let gamers play the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want. At E3 we celebrated the passion of gamers by introducing Xbox One X, broadening our portfolio of gaming devices with the world's most powerful console."

And side business efforts, like the Xbox Game Pass and the Mixer streaming service, have also proceeded with a "very strong start," according to Nadella. "We launched two new services to broaden our reach and enrich our gaming experience, both of which are off to a very strong start. Mixer, a new livestreaming service makes it easier than ever before for gamers to create and share across platforms, and to interact in entirely new ways. The Xbox Game Pass is a digital subscription service that expands our existing gaming value proposition. "

Hood then added that the personal computing segment of Microsoft's business should also hold up pretty well, with hardware and games alike combining in a revenue of about 8.6 and 8.9 billion dollars. The gaming portion is said to have "typical seasonality revenue pattern for a pre-holiday quarter."

Now the real question is…how well will it keep up with Sony? Guess we'll find out over the next few months.