Xbox sees an increase in subscribers on Game Pass

With the start of the year, several companies in the industry are releasing their financial results for the last quarter. Most recently, it was Microsoft's turn, with results for the quarter of 2019 revealing an excellent performance by Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live, despite a drop in the gaming division's overall revenue.

Speaking of numbers, the Redmond-based company confirmed revenue of $35.6 billion (+ 14%), net income of $11.6 billion, and operating income of $13.9 billion (+ 35%), significant growth thanks to the success of the Consumer & Office and Cloud divisions.

As for the entertainment division (which includes Xbox and Surface), there was a 21% drop in revenue compared to the same period of 2018 both in terms of hardware and games sales. Of course, this due to a lower number of new games and also a significant drop in the price of Xbox bundles, but also bear in the mind the new generation of consoles coming during this holiday.

What has kept the division alive, however, are services such as Xbox Game Pass, for which Satya Nadella reports a doubling of subscribers compared to the same quarter of 2018, with a huge increase in active users per month on Xbox Live too (even if the company did not provide official numbers on that front).

In short, it's clear that, to date, the engine of Microsoft's entertainment division is its services, which are still going strong. It will be interesting to see what will happen when the Xbox Series X arrives at Christmas.