Microsoft Q4 FY2020 Results

AlNom

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Yet more evidence that MS are about to drop out of gaming, just like everyone predicted in 2003.

(But seriously, this surely has to be making MS think about loss-leading XSX, with consoles, services, and game sales being so strong).
 
this surely has to be making MS think about loss-leading XSX, with consoles, services, and game sales being so strong

It gives them enough justification to go big with All Access. I think they'll really push the monthly model, which costs them even more than just loss leading up front, but guarantees longer term revenue. Could be wrong!
 
FY2020 Fourth Quarter Financial results they highlighted 100m xbox live players. I doubt they are going to get rid of the service. Also xbox conetent and services increased 65% yoy. Surface is also up 28% and M365 is up 3m to 42.7m users

142b quarter up 14% and 53b in operating income
 
Don't want to be that guy, but we don't how many of those 100 million Xbox Live players actually pay for Gold. Regardless 100 million is damn good. Converting them to Game Pass users will be tantamount next gen.

Tommy McClain


Yeah MS only gives out really vague numbers for a while now. It's the way it's going though, Apple doesn't reveal ipad/iphone unit sales any more either, stopping a few quarters ago.

Wont be surprised if Sony drops hardware units if the next gen doesn't go as well as they hoped (although it's hard to see them not maintaining #1 over Xbox)
 
Don't want to be that guy, but we don't how many of those 100 million Xbox Live players actually pay for Gold. Regardless 100 million is damn good. Converting them to Game Pass users will be tantamount next gen.

Tommy McClain
This time last year they reported 65M XBL members. That's an additional 35M members this past year vs just 8M from 2018 to 2019.
 
Don't want to be that guy, but we don't how many of those 100 million Xbox Live players actually pay for Gold. Regardless 100 million is damn good. Converting them to Game Pass users will be tantamount next gen.

Tommy McClain

Don't really know to be honest. There was no break down.

Anyway I can't wait to start killing people in gears 5 who try to use touch screen controls against me
 
Yet more evidence that MS are about to drop out of gaming, just like everyone predicted in 2003.

Obligatory revenue =/= profit post. There has never been any doubt that Microsoft sell a lot, the speculation has always been how profitable is it. If I buy $150,000 Ferraris and sell them for $25,000 my revenue would be tremendous but every sale would cost me $125,000.

Yeah MS only gives out really vague numbers for a while now. It's the way it's going though, Apple doesn't reveal ipad/iphone unit sales any more either, stopping a few quarters ago.

Apple do report net profit/loss in individual parts of the business though. Investors can look at Apple's businesses and see how they'd doing and coupled with Apple's narrative about future investment, work out whether Apple are likely to address underperforming business units. Microsoft do this for most of Microsoft's business units, but not for Xbox. Microsoft run Xbox like a black operaton - completely off the books.
 
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Yeah MS only gives out really vague numbers for a while now. It's the way it's going though, Apple doesn't reveal ipad/iphone unit sales any more either, stopping a few quarters ago.

Wont be surprised if Sony drops hardware units if the next gen doesn't go as well as they hoped (although it's hard to see them not maintaining #1 over Xbox)
Its the way to go, only when you are not performing as expected Yes Apple stop releasing iphone numbers once they started dropping ( due to them charging $1000+ ), sony after a while didnt with the ps3 release the numbers as it wasnt matching the ps2, they started again once the ps4, MS stopped early on with the xbox one. Now we hear metrics 'play/engagement hours, youtube/facebook/twitter likes (or whatever which thank god gives a more accurate picture to how well something is performing, cause noone would ever sell social media likes/followers for money )

after 5 seconds googling: Hold the presses ... I think social media likes may be slightly open to being easily manipulated
 
MS may be unifying all their services, but no way they are giving up a suscription based model that gives them a steady chunk of cash each month. They are going for suscription models for almost all their products.

Good results all around for the company. Right now their biggest threat is Google, which is growing rapidly on the cloud sector but MS has the brand advantage with Office365. Gsuite doesn't sound as good.
 
MS may be unifying all their services, but no way they are giving up a suscription based model that gives them a steady chunk of cash each month. They are going for suscription models for almost all their products.
Multi-month subscription plans (e..g 3, 6 and 12 month subscriptions) are predictable and steady, month-to-month (cancel anytime) plans are less so because you don't know until next month whether more or less people will be using your service. This is why many subscription-based plans offer a discount for longer subscriptions, it incentivises subscribers to buy-in for longer which gives the service a degree or assurance and predictability over the coming period.
 
Obligatory revenue =/= profit post. There has never been any doubt that Microsoft sell a lot, the speculation has always been how profitable is it. If I buy $150,000 Ferraris and sell them for $25,000 my revenue would be tremendous but every sale would cost me $125,000.



Apple do report net profit/loss in individual parts of the business though. Investors can look at Apple's businesses and see how they'd doing and coupled with Apple's narrative about future investment, work out whether Apple are likely to address underperforming business units. Microsoft do this for most of Microsoft's business units, but not for Xbox. Microsoft run Xbox like a black operaton - completely off the books.

And they do this for a good reason. Because as gaming fans we tended to weaponize this financial data in system wars. Sony has been guilty of this too when it muddy it’s figures by combining ps2 and PS3 unit sales. It’s probably why we don’t get monthly hardware unit sales from NPD anymore.

It’s easy for market leaders to publish numbers that going to positively reflect on their products. If they do poorly or less than their competitor, then it’s like MS and Sony are handing out bricks at their own stoning.

Too bad, I use to like the discussions here in relation to financials when we had hard data.
 
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And they do this for a good reason. Because as gaming fans we tended to weaponize this financial data in system wars. Sony has been guilty of this too when it muddy it’s figures by combining ps2 and PS3 unit sales. It’s probably why we don’t get monthly hardware unit sales from NPD anymore.
Come one, man. Do you really think Microsoft made financial reporting decisions out of concern about what one idiot fanboy says to another on some internet forum? Just no... :nope:
 
Come one, man. Do you really think Microsoft made financial reporting decisions out of concern about what one idiot fanboy says to another on some internet forum? Just no... :nope:

Yep.

Gaming is one of the most prominent hobbies with a significant presence on the web. Games are the second most popular genre on youtube. Whereby, some lists have gaming as the 6th most subscribed channel on YouTube with PewDiePie being #4. Furthermore, gaming has been one of the most important segments of Sony for decades since the PS2. Outside of Windows, Xbox is probably MS's most visible consumer facing brand. You don't think MS or Sony look at analytics when it comes to this market?

NPD data and hardware and software sales in general were probably one the most popular and divisive topics in the gaming market. Not only did forums like us regular discuss on this type of information on a monthly basis but gaming websites regularly covered sales. In our own forum, sales threads represent two of the top five replied to threads of all time in Console Industry. And that's despite the common practice of restarting a lot of those types of threads every month. VGCharts isn't some analysis tool built for pubs, devs, platform owners or traders. It was built for console gamers.

The removal of NPD's public lists and the total obfuscation by MS has totally gutted discussions, tweets and comments regarding hardware sales which used to be the ultimate barometer in the console system wars. When was the last time we talked about life time sales of the Xbox? You don't think that is by design?
 
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NPD data and hardware and software sales in general were probably one the most popular and divisive topics in the gaming market. Not only did forums like us regular discuss on this type of information on a monthly basis but gaming websites regularly covered sales. In our own forum, sales threads represent two of the top five replied to threads of all time in Console Industry. And that's despite the common practice of restarting a lot of those types of threads every month. VGCharts isn't some analysis tool built for pubs, devs, platform owners or traders. It was built for console gamers.

Let me clarify, I absolutely believe Microsoft omit sales data because Xbox trails both PS4 and Switch in terms of hardware units, what I think is absurd is that the reason is because fanboys will "weaponize this financial data in system wars". Microsoft and Sony don't give a toss about a tiny vocal minority of people arguing in forums. If a bunch of idiots on forums arguing sales numbers has Microsoft worried, I genuinely worry for Microsoft.

As for discussion of sales numbers, maybe it doesn't happen any more because even at the best estimates of Xbox One sales, it's sold less than half of PlayStation 4. What is left to discuss? I can understand interest in sales at launch or when over the course of a generation they are in the same ballpark like 360 and PS3. But now? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've never really got why hardware sales matter at all. Is this is some weird need of validation that more people bought the produce you yourself bought? The only thing I care about in terms of sales is that my product has sold well enough to get mainstream support in terms of games release. As an owner, that's all I care about.

The removal of NPD's public lists and the total obfuscation by MS has totally gutted discussions, tweets and comments regarding hardware sales which used to be the ultimate barometer in the console system wars. When was the last time we talked about life time sales of the Xbox? You don't think that is by design?

NPD's information is valuable so they sell it and don't give it away. They used to publish data which was extremely useful if analysed in the right way, this is why they no longer make it available for free. But if you really want access to it, you can pay for it.
 
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