Xbox One sales are up, hardware revenue is down

Xbox is doing better and worse. How does that work? Microsoft’s recent financial release explains.

Xbox One has been doing better recently, with sales up through March 31 being up year-over-year, continuing to sell faster than the Xbox 360 did at the same time in its lifespan. Xbox Live is doing pretty well too, growing by 26 percent year over year, compared to last year at the same time. Revenue grew by 4 percent in gaming overall, and Xbox Live revenue grew by 21 percent thanks to more and bigger transactions by players. That’s likely a combination of more people continuing to buy more games through the console’s marketplace rather than as physical copies through stores and publishers making season passes more appealing.

However, Xbox 360 sales continued to fall, as you’d expect, and so did the Xbox One’s price. That resulted in a year-over-year decline in hardware revenue for the department. Microsoft’s having a tough go of it under Sony’s continued dominance, but they’re still doing better than ever despite all that. While we can expect Microsoft to keep avoiding handing out actual numbers for Xbox One systems sold and the like, we’ll hear more about the Xbox One’s next chapter in just a couple months at E3 2016.