Microsoft announced its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2024, including details on the ongoing performance of the Xbox business.
Interestingly, as mentioned in the past quarter's results announcement, this is the first time in which the results of Activision Blizzard are incorporated with Microsoft's in the report, following the controversial $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The documents detail the results of the More Personal Computing business, which you can see below, and include the gaming arm of the company. As usual, the results are broken down into three major data points, the cumulative gaming revenue, Xbox hardware, and software and services, which includes games, additional content, and Game Pass.
Gaming revenue grew 49% year-on-year, of which 44% is due to the impact of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Xbox Content and Services revenue (games, additional content, and subscriptions) grew 61% year-on-year. This includes 55% points of net impact due to the acquisition.
Xbox Hardware revenue grew 3% year-on-year, inverting the trend from previous quarters.
The gaming revenue result is in line with expectations announced during the financial conference call in October, albeit the net impact of the acquisition was higher than expected. The Xbox Content and Services revenue result is a bit higher compared to the forecast, both in terms of the overall growth percentage and the impact of the acquisition.
According to the newly filed form 10Q, gaming revenue was $7.111 billion for the quarter and $11.030 billion for the first six months of the fiscal year.
Above you can see the full impact of the acquisition, including $2.08 billion in revenue and $440 million in operating loss due to the costs related to the acquisition itself.
Looking at Microsoft as a whole corporation, all the relevant figures are in the black, with revenue up 16% year-on-year and operating income up 30% year-on-year.
The slides of the full presentation can be found on Microsoft's investor relations website.
If you'd like to compare today's results with historical data, you can check out our article dedicated to the previous quarter, published in October.
It's worth mentioning that while the acquisition of Activision Blizzard was consummated in October 2023, Microsoft is still engaged in a legal battle against the FTC, with the American antitrust regulator poised to bring the matter in front of its administrative law court in the coming months.
